Census: Texas In Top Five States For Movement Into Manufacturing Jobs In 2015

U.S. Census Bureau: Texas in Top Five States for Movement Into Manufacturing Jobs in 2015

California, Texas, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana were the top five states for hiring into manufacturing jobs in 2015, based on U.S. Census Bureau data on workers’ movement between jobs in the United States (for the second quarter of 2015).

While California and Texas may be expected to have large flows due to the size of their respective workforce’s, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana – states with histories of manufacturing – are also in the top five. Census Bureau job flows data allow businesses, researchers and policy makers to gain greater insight into labor market fluidity across the economy.

The Job-to-Job Flows (J2J) data trace worker reallocation through industries, geographic labor markets, and to/from periods of nonemployment.  J2J can answer questions such as: which industries are hiring newly separated manufacturing workers?  Which states are hiring out-of-state workers into jobs in manufacturing? How have these trends changed over time?

Figure 1: Job-to-Job Flows to Manufacturing in 2015 Q2 (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Job-to-Job Flows R2017Q1, as accessed through J2J Explorer)

J2J Explorer can be used to quickly determine the top states for job flows into various sectors of the economy.  The earlier example showing that the top five states in terms of hires into manufacturing jobs are California, Texas, Ohio, Michigan and Indiana is from J2J.

Users can also use J2J to find out which industries are more likely to hire workers coming off of a spell of persistent nonemployment.

For all industries, approximately 51 percent of all hires in the United States come from workers that were previously not employed, but this decreases to 42 percent when looking only at hires into manufacturing jobs (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Job-to-Job Flows R2017Q1, as accessed through J2J Explorer).

Figure 2: Job-to-Job Flows from 20 Industries to Manufacturing in 5 States in 2015 Q2 (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Job-to-Job Flows R2017Q1, as accessed through J2J Explorer)

It is possible to drill deeper to see which industries are supplying these manufacturing workers into the top five states. Figure 2 shows that Texas’ manufacturing hires are more likely to come from jobs in construction, while California’s manufacturing hires are more likely to come from jobs in retail trade than the other analyzed states.

Overall, the most likely origin industry for manufacturing hires into these five states is the administrative/support/waste management/remediation services industry (i.e., the sector in which “temp” workers are classified) at almost 31 percent (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Job-to-Job Flows R2017Q1, as accessed through J2J Explorer).

J2J data were developed as part of the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program within the Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies.

The LEHD program combines administrative records from state partners with data from censuses and surveys to create a national frame of jobs. The employer-employee linkages within the LEHD data infrastructure are mined to create new public-use information—in this case on where workers go after they leave jobs.

New measures showing the earnings before and after a worker changed jobs – as well as tabulations by metro area – were released in September. These new measures will allow analysts to understand the earnings implications for workers in manufacturing and other industries who move between different metro areas and to/from different industries.