Sector employment 2013

Hi Robert, Here a couple of thoughts about what you are seeing. Part of what you are seeing is reflected in the actual values reported by REIS for the two years' data sets, this is the largest component of the change. This is the information for the REIS data: Current year (2013 data) proprietors/Wage & salary employment/Total : 226/1228/1454 Last year (2012 data): proprietors/Wage & salary employment/Total 510/1181/1691 A little additional detail... REIS gives us proprietor data but is a year lagged – It dropped from 510 in 2011 to 226 in 2012 REIS 2012 is our base wage and salary employment adjusted by the increase in CEW from 2012 to 2013 REIS 2012 1228 CEW 2012 989 CEW 2013 949 First estimate of 2013 = 1228 -40 + 226 = 1414 REIS 2011 1180 CEW 2011 942 CEW 2012 989 First estimate of 2012 = 1180 + 47 + 510 – 1643 Additionally when we build Cobb, GA 2013, the file shows employment of 1498.2 for Sector 412, which is a very different value from the 5,879 you report in your post. If you are getting this value of Employment in your Cobb County, GA data set, we would appreciate it if you could share the Model with us by sending it implangroup@implan.com so that we diagnose the issue with your Model. Please let us know if you have any additional questions or concerns about this. IMPLAN Support Team

The reason the employment figure I gave in my question is so much larger than what is reported for that industry in Cobb County for 2013 and 2012 is that I'm starting with a value for output that's much larger than what is reported. I know that industry 412 isn't the only component making up travel expenditures for "auto transportation" in my source data but I'm stuck with this definition for reasons I won't go into here. When I enter $358.2 million dollars for output in industry 412, IMPLAN calculates 5,879 jobs are required for that level of output (based on your output/worker figures). My point is that the 2012 output/worker figure for the same industry is much smaller than that for 2013 so with comparable output values for the two years, I get a much smaller number for employment in 2013. I've looked at the Industry Summary data for both years from the Study Area Data option and I see that employment fell 2.5% but output rose 19.4%, hence the huge rise in output/worker from 2012 to 2013. I know this is not a result of something IMPLAN did; its the data you received. But, I would sure like to know how this industry could see such a large rise in output with smaller employment. That's a heck of a rise in productivity.

Thank you for your question. The change in output per worker from IMPLAN 2012 to IMPLAN 2013 data for “Transit and ground passenger transportation “ is largely due to changes in estimated output at the national level. The Bureau of Economic Analysis publishes estimates of output at the national level for certain industries. "Transit and ground passenger transportation" is one of those industries. The BEA's output estimates are lagged by 1 year compared to many other datasets, including IMPLAN data. For example, when 2012 IMPLAN data are published, the most current available BEA output data would be for 2011. Accordingly, IMPLAN must forecast by 1 year the latest BEA estimates of national output by industry. The BEA publishes its output estimates as a time series, so that when it obtains new data for a year, it will re-estimate prior years' data. The latest publication from the BEA estimates national output for the industry in question at $51.4 billion in 2012 and $48.2 billion for 2011. IMPLAN uses the latest 2012 estimate (along with other factors) to forecast 2013 values; we rely on the BEA to maintain consistency with national government data estimates. In last year's publication of output data, however, the BEA estimated output for the ground transportation industry to be $32.0 billion for 2011. So, while there was an increase in output from 2011 to 2012 (48.2 to 51.4 billion), and in productivity due to largely stable employment levels, most of that increase in output is the result of revised government estimates of output from year to year; accordingly, the implied increase in productivity between 2012 and 2013 IMPLAN data is due to using revised (and newer) estimates, not to a change in the real economy. IMPLAN's forecast of 2011 data to 2012 and of 2012 data to 2013 uses the latest data available at the time, so changes in the source data would lead to changes in IMPLAN's estimates of output at the national and county levels. IMPLAN's estimates of county-level output must sum to its estimate of the same year's national level output (which, as noted, relies heavily on the BEA).