Data Tools
Check out these data tools to find out more about the labor market including wage growth, opportunity occupations, and socioeconomic trends across cities.
Opportunity Occupations Monitor
Author: Center for Workforce and Economic Opportunity (Atlanta Fed)
About: Opportunity occupations are jobs that do not require a bachelor’s degree and pay at least the national median wage, adjusted for local cost of living differences. This tool displays opportunity occupations across states and metro areas between 2010 and 2016. It also indicates which jobs are housing cost burdened, meaning that workers contribute more than 30 percent of their monthly wage toward housing expenses.
Author: Center for Workforce and Economic Opportunity (Atlanta Fed)
About: Opportunity occupations are jobs that do not require a bachelor’s degree and pay at least the national median wage, adjusted for local cost of living differences. This tool displays opportunity occupations across states and metro areas between 2010 and 2016. It also indicates which jobs are housing cost burdened, meaning that workers contribute more than 30 percent of their monthly wage toward housing expenses.
Wage Growth Tracker
Author: Center for Human Capital Studies (Atlanta Fed)
About: This tool tracks the year-to-year overall wage growth of individuals between 1998 and the present. It also includes wage growth by demographics (age, education, race, and geographic census division) and job characteristics (full-time/part-time, industry, and occupation). The tool functions using microdata from the Current Population Survey
and is based on a methodology
developed by the San Francisco Fed.
Author: Center for Human Capital Studies (Atlanta Fed)
About: This tool tracks the year-to-year overall wage growth of individuals between 1998 and the present. It also includes wage growth by demographics (age, education, race, and geographic census division) and job characteristics (full-time/part-time, industry, and occupation). The tool functions using microdata from the Current Population Survey


Peer City Identification Tool
Author: Community Development and Policy Studies division
(Chicago Fed)
About: This tool identifies and compares groups of cities with similar economic, demographic, social, and housing trends or challenges. The data set includes 300 cities that had a population of at least 50,000 in 1960 and currently have a median population of more than 100,000. This tool uses data from the American Community Survey
and historical Decennial Census records, and was developed out of the Industrial Cities Initiative
, a study that documented 10 Midwestern cities with manufacturing legacies.

Author: Community Development and Policy Studies division

About: This tool identifies and compares groups of cities with similar economic, demographic, social, and housing trends or challenges. The data set includes 300 cities that had a population of at least 50,000 in 1960 and currently have a median population of more than 100,000. This tool uses data from the American Community Survey


Eight Different Faces of the Labor Market
Author: Federal Reserve Bank of New York
About: This data visualization tool creates a snapshot of the labor market by presenting up-to-date labor market indicators: unemployment, employment, hours worked, labor demand, labor force participation, job loss, wages, and the mismatch between unemployment and job vacancies.

Author: Federal Reserve Bank of New York
About: This data visualization tool creates a snapshot of the labor market by presenting up-to-date labor market indicators: unemployment, employment, hours worked, labor demand, labor force participation, job loss, wages, and the mismatch between unemployment and job vacancies.