What would you guess is the most common job in the nation? Retail? Agriculture? Factory work? While all of those might seem kind of reasonable, the fact is that every area seems to have it's own jobs that are the most common, depending on terrain, social climate, and availability.
Those differences fascinated us here at the Movoto Real Estate Blog, and we decided to find out where each type of job was the most popular. To do this, we made a colored map of the most common occupations, right down to the most common ones in every zip code.
How exactly did we do this? You can find out in the very next section.
Our Methodology
In order to create this map, we turned to the magic of the Internet and the U.S. Census Five Year Community Survey. Using that, we found out the percent of the population that worked in each of 13 categories. Those categories were:
- -Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations
- -Construction, extraction, and maintenance occupations
- -Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations
- -Food preparation and serving related occupations
- -Healthcare support occupations
- -Management, business, and financial operations occupations
- -Office and administrative support occupations
- -Personal care and service occupations
- -Production occupations
- -Professional and related occupations
- -Protective service occupations
- -Sales and related occupations
- -Transportation and material moving occupations
We also looked at the popularity of particular industries in each zip code, and those industries were:
- -Construction, extraction, and maintenance occupations
- -Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations
- -Management, professional, and related occupations
- -Production, transportation, and material moving occupations
- -Sales and office occupations
- -Service occupations
We then color-coded the maps above to correspond to those two different areas. Let's take a look at those last six categories to see which states excelled in which occupations.
Construction, Extraction, And Maintenance Occupations
This was easily the least popular occupation on our list, as you can see by our map. In fact, you can see by even a quick glance at our map that no one state really showed up as being all about construction, extraction, and maintenance.
There were a few spots in West Virginia and in Arizona, near Luke Air Force Base, where the occupation was more common, though, but this was still a bit of a rarity.
Farming, Fishing, And Forestry Occupations
This type of job was pretty widespread, but there was some density of this industry in one state in particular. California had a grouping of farming, fishing, and forestry zip codes in central California, near areas like Fresno and Clovis. This might be a surprise to those who think that CA is all about technology, but in reality Silicon Valley is fertile farming land and offers great produce.
You'll also see a few zip codes in Oregon, Idaho, and even Florida with this particular occupation type as the most popular option.
Management, Professional, And Related Occupations
This was easily the most popular occupation type on our entire map, which does make sense. Of course, there were a few spots where it was more popular than the rest, particularly in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Delaware, and most of their neighboring states.
Even Washington D.C. was almost entirely about management and professional jobs, which probably makes sense when you think about it.
Production, Transportation, And Material Moving Occupations
As the map shows, you really won't find much of this occupation in the western half of the county. However, most states in the east did have their fair share of this type of occupation, with Ohio, Tennessee, and Indiana having high concentrations of production, transportation, and material moving workers.
Zip codes around Murfreesboro seemed to have a high density of this occupation type in particular.
Sales And Office Occupations
You might have expected there to be more of these, but as you can see it really wasn't as popular as you might believe. As with the other categories, though, there were some spots where this was a slightly more common occupation. Parts of Florida, Utah, and even Oregon had large groupings of sales and office types around.
It should also be noted that there seemed to be more of these workers along the southeast coastline, around Savannah and Brunswick, Georgia.
Service Occupations
This trend was particularly interesting. Nevada had the biggest concentration of this industry, and then you'll notice on the map that there's a diagonal line of this job type stretching through Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. While there may be smatterings of this occupation in many states, the southern tip of Texas to central Nevada seemed to be the longest stretch of Service workers.
West Virginia also exhibited a lot of this occupation type, but the zip codes where it was the most popular weren't as grouped together as in some other states.
Career Comes First
While management, business, and financial operations occupations might be the most common in the nation, every zip code tells a different story when it comes to who works where. You might find that your job is more common than you thought, or you might find you're a bit of a occupation rarity.
So, if you work in a particular industry and you're looking to head to an area where jobs might be a little more common, don't hesitate to contact us. We sell houses, after all, and we're sure there's a place out there that will aid you in your career goals.