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Data Sources

State Data Sources

Check the user console or visit your group page for a list of data sources specific to your state.

Other Data Sources

The Catalogue of Workforce Information Sources was recently released by the U.S. Department of Labor and serves as a 99 page guide to all things workforce information including a guide to federal data programs, private providers (including EMSI as referenced below) and web portals (including referenced below).

There are numerous clearinghouses of information that provide users access to free and fee based information. One of the best may be This website allows users to query types of information by provider (e.g. Bureau of Labor Statistics) or data type (e.g. employment, quality of life, etc.) The clearinghouse includes links to both free information and fee-based information. The fee-based information is denoted by $ icons that make it easy for the user to know beforehand that there will be charge for data accessed through the site. Another diverse web portal/clearninghouse is found on the CareerOneStop site.

Strategic Advantage, a product of Economic Modeling Specialists (EMSI) provides fee-based labor market information at very specific levels of detail including multi-digit industry codes and zip code levels of geographic detail. EMSI includes modules on industries, occupations, and economic forecasting, and has a robust geographical information system package. However, there is a charge for the information, which is provided via an on-line account with twice-annual updates.

EmployOn uses spidering technology to aggregate online job postings, and has been used by some sector intitiatives to identify openings in targeted industries (see sample output).

There are several companies that specialize in developing industry profiles, which are typically used to give sales representatives a quick summary of the key issues faced by a particular industry they are targeting. These profiles can be very useful to sector initiative conveners as well, and are relatively inexpensive, especially compared to the amount of work required to collect comparable data on your own. First Research is an example of such a company. Free sources of similar information include globalEDGE, America's Career InfoNet and the BLS's Career Guide to Industries. These tend to be less comprehensive and less regularly updated, but are still excellent resources to understand an industry quickly.