Visualizations

The US employment landscape has changed dramatically in the past two decades. Recessions, natural disasters, industry crises, and migration patterns have left an aftermath of uneven growth. The red and blue bubbles in this map represent a rolling 12-month net change in total employment across US metropolitan areas.

Some metropolitan areas bounced back quickly from the COVID-19 employment shock in April 2020. Others continue to struggle. This map uses seasonally adjusted data indexed to March 2019 to show cumulative employment gains or losses across US metropolitan areas relative to pre-COVID-19 levels.

This tool for measuring job quality and accessibility emerged as part of a larger industry analysis project with the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning (CMAP) in 2021.

For this analysis, TIP focuses on national job postings activity from March 2022 to March 2023. Users can examine the top 15 in-demand positions in the US by occupation, job title, employer, and location.

TIP’s data analytics team has developed a tool to make state rankings more useful by adding a simple dispersion factor to the visualization.

Data from the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) can be used to map air freight trends. This is an example of air freight traffic passing through Anchorage, Alaska.

An index developed by Texas A&M University’s Real Estate Center can be applied to housing markets across the US. This is an example using selected US metropolitan markets.

Data from the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) can be used to assess potential financial losses, social vulnerability, and community resilience. This is an example from coastal Mississippi.