Green is for healthcare, education and government; red is for manufacturing and trade; blue is for professional services; and yellow is retail and hospitality.
Massachussetts did not submit jobs data. Either that or they're just between millions of jobs right now.(via Robert Manduca)
If you like maps and data, you're really going to enjoy this project created by Harvard PhD student Robert Manduca. Inspired by the viral maps that used the 2010 Census to show every person in America as a dot color-coded by race (which showed how separately we still live in the 21st Century), Manduca used the 2010 Census data to create a color-coded, interactive map of every single job in America. For reasons that escape me (having to do with the Census itself), Massachussetts was not included in this extended data set. Also not shown are a lot of green dots that should be there, but aren't for security clearance reasons. More on that later.
This may seem like way too many green jobs. A lot of those are blue and yellow jobs right next to each other. (via Robert Manduca)
Although he expected to see that jobs had largely left downtown cores in America, Manduca was surprised by cities' resilience. Manhattan, for example, is literally filled with jobs, albeit almost 100% white-collar jobs. In some places, manufacturing remains strong or is even making a comeback, like in Brooklyn and Queens. In others, like Detroit, you can clearly see the decline of the urban core in the ring of red dots that represent manufacturing jobs that moved to suburbs around the city:
This is less zoomed-in than New York, to show how the red jobs migrated to the suburbs. (Not pictured: the jobs that migrated overseas.) (via Robert Manduca)Now, here's a map of the Washington D.C. area, showing way more blank areas than you'd expect. This is especially true when you look at the sparse number of dots on the patch of ground where the largest office building on Earth is located: the Pentagon. Of the dots that do show up, an oddly high proportion of them are retail/hospitality jobs. There's literally nothing showing up for most of Langley, VA, where CIA headquarters is located.
If you look at the CIA headquarters on Google Maps, it informs you there's a Burger King inside. Google also lists the Pentagon as the "Vast home of the US. Defense Dept." The NSA is somewhere up and to the right of Mt. Rainier... I couldn't find it
Did you enjoy that map? I hope so, because you're probably on a list now. Anyway, here are some more cities. Feel free to make sweeping assumptions about their histories and residents based on the jobs. For instance, here's Los Angeles. People on the west/north side are all trying to break into Hollywood. People in the east/south quadrant have real jobs.
LA: The one city I will never feel shy about judging despite only visiting once.
(via CityLab)
New Orleans...seems like there should be more jobs.
I've never been to New Orleans but I like how colorful it seems.(via CityLab)
Las Vegas...way too many jobs.
It's almost like there are a lot of hospitality jobs there or something.(via CityLab)
Philly...looks much better than my relatives there have led me to believe.
I was born here, delivered by someone with a green-dot job downtown. (Not zoomed in all the way.)
(via Robert Manduca)
Dallas and Ft. Worth have a lot of jobs, and a LOT of sprawl.
If you're looking at this on a phone, you may want to click to enlarge. You may also want a bigger phone. A Texas-sized phone.(via Robert Manduca)
Check out the rest of the nation at Robert Manduca's site, Where Are The Jobs?