Comparing Metro Phoenix
High Technology Employment
Description: This indicator measures the share of total industry employment that occurs in high technology jobs. The definition of high-technology sectors is based on a modification of the U.S. Department of Labor and National Science Foundation (NSF)'s classification scheme http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind04/c8/state/data/8-25dt.pdf as modified by Professor Breandan O hUallachain to accommodate data disclosure issues.
Rationale: It is likely that the United States will continue to exploit its comparative advantage in highly-skilled occupations while lower-skilled tasks will increasingly face pressure from globalization. Regions endowed with high proportions of high-skilled and technical jobs will benefit from this trend.
Data Sources: County Business Patterns http://censtats.census.gov/cbpnaic/cbpnaic.shtml is the source of these employment data. The definition of each metropolitan area is the 2003 definitions of the counties that compose each metropolitan area http://www.census.gov/population/estimates/metro-city/03msa.txt. This definition has been used for all years 1998-2005.
Comments on the Quality of the Data: Suppressed data were estimated using the provided mid-point of each data range. The definition of high-technology sectors is based on a modification of the U.S. Department of Labor and NSF's classification scheme http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind04/c8/state/data/8-25dt.pdf. The classification of sectors was modified to moderate the effects of employment data suppression at disaggregated levels, but the data should be viewed with extreme caution since the employment numbers in many of the cells were suppressed and only a range of employment levels were available. When this occurred the midpoint of the range was used to estimate employment levels.
