Weekly Economic Trends and Indicators

This is the second in a series of articles highlighting features of the Quad Cities economy. The topic this week is the structure of employment in the Quad Cities metro area. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) periodically releases detailed labor market data for individual metro areas. For the Quad Cities, this data was most recently collected in May 2021.

One statistic the BLS tracks is the employment share of each major occupational group. This allows us to see what types of jobs are overrepresented or underrepresented in the local area compared to the U.S. as a whole.

Some of the occupational groups for which the employment share is higher than the national average here in the Quad Cities compared to the national average are listed in the table below.

The production category includes all types of manufacturing. Our region is well-known as a manufacturing center, producing goods which are sold throughout the world. These statistics show just how crucial manufacturing is for the local area compared to its importance in the U.S. on average. Production employment’s share locally is one-and-a-half times the national share. Our central location and access to the Mississippi River as well as multiple interstate highways give us a competitive advantage in transportation, as the statistics also show.

Because production is such a key component of the local economy, the BLS investigated this category in additional detail, including the “location quotient” for specific manufacturing occupations. The location quotient measures how concentrated that occupation is locally compared to the national average.

The BLS reports that the concentration of most manufacturing occupations is greater in the Quad Cities than the national average. At the extreme, metal pourers and casters are 13.9 times more concentrated in the Quad Cities than the national average, putting our region at the forefront nationally in this industry. Many manufacturing occupations are two to three times more concentrated than the national average.

This level of concentration in manufacturing creates demand for employment in other key industries, including transportation, construction, maintenance and engineering—all of which are also well-represented in the region. Concentrations of employment in primary and supporting industries like this create synergies that lead to an environment of innovation in that sector which has spillover benefits to the entire region.

Next week: Wages and the cost of living in the Quad Cities