While Wichita economic development leaders have tried to turn Wichita into a hub of information technology-related industry, it has not worked so far.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, an agency of the United States Department of Labor, gathers data on employment and wages in a program titled Occupational Employment Statistics. By using this data we can learn about the prevalence of types of jobs in an area, and the salaries paid. I’ve gathered this data and present some examples from my interactive visualization.
Although data for 2020 is available, it is less complete than the 2019 data, so I use the 2019 data.
In these examples taken from the visualization, I present data for the Wichita metropolitan area and some others. Some are nearby metros, and some, like Pittsburgh, Greenville, and Chattanooga, are metros that Wichita leaders have visited in learning expeditions.
The first example shows the prevalence of jobs as measured by the number of jobs per thousand jobs. This shows the occupation group “Computer and Mathematical Operations.” As shown, Wichita appears low in the list.
A second example shows the mean annual salary for the same occupation group. (I also include the data for all salaried occupations.) For computer-related occupations, Wichita is at the bottom of the list.
To learn more about this data and access the interactive visualization, click on Visualization: Occupational employment statistics.