What it measures
- Population, age, education and household characteristics
- Labor force participation, employment status and commuting
- Earnings and income distributions
- Housing costs and tenure, which shape what a wage is worth locally
What it does not measure
Most misreadings of labor data come from asking a dataset a question it was not built to answer. These are the limits worth holding onto.
- Job openings or employer hiring activity
- Detailed occupational wages at the level OEWS provides
- Anything close to real time. Even 1-year estimates describe a completed calendar year
Update cadence
Annual, with 1-year and 5-year estimate products.
Occupation pages name the specific release behind each figure and when it was imported, so you can see how current a number is rather than assuming it is new. More on that on about the data.
How JobMarketHealth uses it
- The ACS 5-Year workforce profile appears on every state labor-market page (50 states and DC). Shares are derived from ACS detailed-table counts.
- Structural context only. ACS is not an input to the Job Market Health score and is not used on occupation pages or to describe direction.
- If the Census data cannot be read or fails validation, the profile is shown as unavailable rather than estimated.
Where it sits
This dataset is displayed as context on the pages described above and is not an input to the score. Read the methodology.
Official source
U.S. Census Bureau publishes American Community Survey. JobMarketHealth organizes and derives from that public data and is not its publisher.
Census American Community Survey
Related guides
- How to compare local job marketsOccupational data goes local through OEWS employment and concentration. Monthly demand data mostly does not, so local comparisons need care about what is being compared.
Ready to look at an occupation? Search occupations to see the score, wage context and outlook for a specific job.