Economics 191AC Economics of the Arts and Culture

Spring 2012

ACCESSING OCCUPATIONAL EMPLOYMENT STATISTICS FOR INDIVIDUAL CITIES

(1) Go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) homepage at www.bls.gov

(2) On the left side of the screen, under "Subject Areas," select “Employment” then select the link to " Employment by Occupation"

(3) Scroll down to “On this Page” and select "OES Databases"

(4) Under “Current Tables: May 2011 Estimates” choose “Metropolitan and non-metropolitan area estimates listed by county or town”

(5) Select your state

(6) For each state, find the metro area that is the closest match to each of your cities in that state. Note that this may not always be very close—for example, if one of your cities is Berkeley, CA, the closest match will be the Oakland-Fremont-Hayward metropolitan area.

(7) Click on the occupational group that you think will contain the occupations you are looking for, that is: architects, graphic designers, musicians & singers, writers and authors, and photographers. [Hint: All of these occupations except one are located within the same major occupational group.]

(8) For each occupation, find the number employed and the median hourly wage, then click on the link to get a description of that occupation. Note that not all cities will have listings for all occupations, and in some cases the employment number has not been released [the code for this is (8)].

(9) If you’re interested, when you’re on the page with the description of the occupation, click on “Metropolitan area profile for this occupation.” Why do you think that Tallahassee, FL is the metro area with the highest concentration of jobs for photographers?? (I have no idea.)