WORKFORCE 3ONE
TRANSCRIPT OF WEBINAR
Local Employment Dynamics:
OnTheMap Version 3
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2008
Transcript by:
Federal News Service
Washington, D.C.
MR. GONZALEZ: Again, my name is Gary Gonzalez. I'm going to be handling all technical issues associated with today's session. Before I turn things over to our speakers there's just a few things I want to go over with you. If you haven't attended a webinar with us before, I want to begin by going over the layout of the webinar room as it appears on your monitor.
There's going to be four areas I want to direct your attention to. The first is the presentation slide area. This is where the main visual content is going to appear for you and it'll be the main focus of your attention throughout today's session. To the top left of your screen there's an attendee list. It just displays a list of everyone who's logged into the webinar with you.
Directly beneath that attendee list there is a chat feature that you can use throughout today's session to submit questions or comments directly to the presenters. Due to the number of attendees we're expecting for our session, we're going to rely on that chat feature -- as I said -- to solicit your questions or comments. So if you're attending this session in a group, go ahead and take a second to pick someone from your group and that person will be responsible for entering in your group's questions or your comments. And again, the reason we're doing this is to control background noise and interruptions throughout today's session due to the number of attendees we're expecting.
Now, the fourth area is the meeting toolbar at the top. If you're to click that meeting dropdown you'll notice that there is a full screen option you can choose. If you feel that the PowerPoint slide area or the other areas are too small, click that full screen option and that will increase the resolution or the size of the meeting room. And you can always go back if you'd like.
Now a little bit more about that chat feature. If you want to submit a question or comment you'll notice that there is a white horizontal text box at the bottom of that chat room. Mouse over, left click in that area, type in your question or your comment, and then just click that arrow button at the right to submit. Anything you submit via that chat is only viewable by the presenters. Other participants won't see anything you submit. So again, you can submit those questions at any point throughout today's session. We'll monitor those questions as they come in, place them in a queue, and then address those questions at the end of today's session.
Now, to get a sense of who's attending the session with us, and to give you a chance to practice using that chat feature, I'm going to ask that you let us know a little bit about yourself. Just some general information such as who you are, your name, your organization; where you're located in the country, such as your city or state or your region; and how many people, if any, are attending this session with you. So mouse over, left click in the white horizontal text field at the bottom of the chat feature -- at the bottom left hand of your screen -- type that information in, and then click the arrow button at the right to submit.
All right. While you're doing that I just want to let you know we are going to be recording today's session. We're going to be making the recording available to you within the next two business days and it'll be posted -- the recording will be posted to Workforce3One. You'll be able to access that recording through your My Events page. Your My Events page you'll be taken to -- it's the first page you're taken to when you log into Workforce3One. And you'll be able to access not only the recording, but the transcript, the PowerPoint, and any resources associated with today's session by logging into Workforce3One, clicking the View Resources link to the right of the session title on your My Events page. And again, that recording will be posted within the next two business days.
All right. Before I turn things over to Dr. Jeremy Wuthers (sic), a polling question that we're going to bring up just asking how many people are watching this webinar at your site. So just use that polling window that I brought up, mouse over and left click the appropriate field.
And while you're doing that I wan to turn things over to Dr. Jeremy Wu, the LEHD Program Manager for the U.S. Census Bureau. Dr. Wu?
JEREMY WU: Gary, thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome to today's webinar on OnTheMap's Version 3 which was released last Thursday. So if you touch it, it's still hot. We had originally scheduled the first webinar for September 17th; however, within 24 hours of the announcement on August 11th more than 460 people signed up for the session and the capacity was 300.
So we made an appeal to the Employment and Training Administration -- or ETA -- for an additional webinar that is dedicated to the state labor market information offices. And as part of the Local Employment Dynamics -- LED partnership -- the LMI offices will likely receive many of the follow-up questions about OnTheMap. ETA responded positively and immediate, as they always have. Thus we have today's session, which is also joined by some of the ETA offices. We're very grateful to Gay Gilbert, Janet Sten, Tony Dais, Michael Harding, Grace Gilvane (ph), Anne Mulvaney, and many others at ETA who make this webinar possible today.
It was also with support from ETA and LED partners that the first version of OnTheMap was released less than three years ago. We have come a long way since that time. Today the application covers 45 states and five years of data, from 2002 to 2006 with much more to come.
The Utah Department of Workforce Services described OnTheMap as one of the information products that makes the hearts of data geeks beat a little faster. I'm certainly one of those data geeks. And I'm very pleased today we have two presenters who will give us a live demonstration as well as descriptions of many of the incredible features in OnTheMap Version 3.
Matthew Graham has been a geographer and researcher with the LEHD program at the U.S. Census Bureau for about three years. He received his master's degree in Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles -- UCLA -- where he conducted and published research on GIS, economic development and public health. Mr. Graham also has degrees in physics and mechanical engineering from MIT and taught physics in the East African country of Tanzania as a Peace Corps volunteer.
Our second presenter is Patrick Heath Hayward, who has been with the LEHD since the summer of 2006. Originally from Oklahoma, he studied economics and computer science at DePaul University in Indiana (sic). After college he toured Eastern Europe, India, Southeast Asia, and worked for a year in New Zealand. He returned to earn a Master's of Science degree in GIS from the University of Denver. He enjoys fine food, traveling, and giving webinars.
So with that let me turn it over to Matt and Heath.
MATTHEW GRAHAM: Thank you, Jeremy. This is Matthew Graham. I'll be doing the first part of this webinar. Today, as in previous OnTheMap webinars, we have much material to cover so I'm going to get right into it. The webinar today will begin with a brief introduction of the LED -- that is Local Employment Dynamics -- partnership, as well as previous versions of OnTheMap. Then my colleague Heath Hayward and I will spend most of the remaining time explaining and demonstrating OnTheMap Version 3, which as Jeremy said was publicly released last Thursday.
A few major points that will be covered are the new user interface of OnTheMap, the expanded data set that is available in this version, and the reconfigured analyses in the version. We'll end the session with a question and answer period coordinated by the webinar moderators.
Now, Jeremy stole my thunder for a couple of these intro slides but I'll just go over them again quickly. The Local Employment Dynamics -- or LED -- partnership currently joins together 49 state and territorial partners with the U.S. Census Bureau to create a national longitudinal infrastructure of employment data. The strength of this partnership rests on a state-federal data sharing model that combines local knowledge, a national frame, and cutting edge economic and statistical modeling techniques. In addition, because the LED partnership uses existing data sets to create new data products it is very cost effective, something I think we all would like to see. Among the new data products created by the LED partnership is OnTheMap.
For those of you new to the OnTheMap application, the easiest way to describe it is a free, online, publicly available application that shows where workers live and where people work, all of which we'll see during the live demo. OnTheMap Version 1, as Jeremy mentioned, was created for one pilot state back in 2006. As a result of the good feedback we received from Version 1 we developed Version 2 which was released in 2007 and extended the application to 42 states over three years of data.
Version 3, which was released last Thursday, continues to expand the data set which, as Jeremy mentioned, is now 45 states and five years of data; as well as making big improvements to the user interface and breaking new ground by adding segmented data, which effectively gives users 10 times the amount of data previously available. And we will spend more time later in the webinar discussing the segmented data feature and what it means for you.
I'll now note a few of the advances that we have made in Version 3. And for those of you who are users of Version 2, these are particularly notable. First, we've expanded the name searching utility. Now all of the geographical areas are available, even inherently numerical ones like zip codes. Next, it's much easier to manipulate the map, including panning and zooming, both with the keyboard and mouse and using the on-screen tools. We now have a control panel that is persistent; that is, it stays on screen unless the user chooses to minimize it. A big change from OnTheMap Version 2 has been that we've taken all of the analyses that are available OnTheMap 3 and made them consistent in that they each have four steps. And this will be a big part of the live demo that we see later on today.
We also have a new area profile map overlay in OnTheMap Version 3 which -- that language may not be explicit or clear to everybody, but you'll see very quickly how that can be used for some really good analyses. We also have better area selection tools; that is, most of the selection tools -- how to choose geography -- stayed the same, but they're much, much easier to use. And there's now user control over the Shed rollups and those are the lists of places where people are going. And again, if you're new to OnTheMap you will see what I'm talking about later on in this presentation. And finally, we've got animation of map overlays over multiple years. This is something that was not even dreamed of for OnTheMap 2 so I think it's a pretty exciting development.
Okay. Before going into the live demo I just want to take a couple slides here to help orient you to the new user interface and the way that OnTheMap operates. Generally there are two screens that you'll see in the OnTheMap application; there's the entry page and the main map viewer page with the control panel. I show here the entry page on the left, the map viewer page on the right.
So this is a blowup of the entry page and I just want to point out a few features here. So first of all is the place name look-up; that is, this is where you start off searching for names of places that you want to analyze. Also are the maps. You can get right into the application by clicking on the maps. And the third part are some of the informational links on the side; these are helpful resources for user who come into the application either wanting to learn more about the application or knowing nothing at all and wanting to learn the first few steps of how to use OnTheMap.
Now, once you get into the application -- that is, once you either search for a name or click on the map -- you will get the main map viewer page. And I've blown that up here so you can see the main map area in the right center here and on the left is what we call the control panel. And I'll be spending a minute or two here describing a bit more about the control panel because that's where a lot of the work is done to generate analyses.
Okay. Here's a blowup of the top of the control panel, down here on your screen. This first thing I want to point out are the two small tools just next to the control panel -- it's right there. Those are the re-center and the scale ladder tools and those are two of the things that can help you move around the map and zoom in and out. And those are definitely different from what was in OnTheMap Version 2.
The next thing I'd like to point out is the layout of the control panel. Now, there are five tabs along the top of the control panel. Each one of the tabs has a separate job and we'll talk about each one in turn as we do the demo here. The first tab, which comes up whenever you enter through the entry page or link straight into the application, is the Search tab; and that's where you'll be able to, again, search for names of any of the different layers that we support.
The next tab is the Map Key tab and the Map Key tab lists a few bits of information about the map itself and about the layers that are being displayed, as well as about the scale -- that is, if you're zoomed in and how many miles per inch on your screen, as well as the north arrow -- and once you generate an overlay it will show the overlay key as well.
The third tab is the Layers tab and that allows users to manipulate which layers they're viewing; that is, am I seeing counties? Am I seeing state boundaries? Am I seeing congressional districts? As well as the labels for those layers; that is, you can control the layers you see independently from the labels.
The fourth tab is the Analysis tab. And as I like to say, that's where the magic happens because pretty much that is where you will spend most of your time performing the analyses that OnTheMap can do. And that is where we'll spend most of the time during the live demo is on the Analysis tab.
The last tab is the Results tab. And right now if we were to go into OnTheMap just from a brand new window and take a look at the Results tab it would be blank. The Results tab does not get populated until an analysis is actually performed.
Okay. Last slide before we get into the demo, I just want to talk briefly about the general process through which analyses can be created in OnTheMap. We sort of like to think of it as seven simple steps. Now, each one may have a few parts to it, but generally this is the idea.
First of all, as with any good analysis, you've got to define your analytical question. Are we looking for information on low-income workers? Are we looking for information on workers who work in a downtown area? And what do we want to find out about those workers? Once you've defined your question, the next step is to enter the application and locate your geographical area of interest; that is, search for the name and the possibly pan and zoom the map so that you've got your area of interest in your sights.
Third -- and this is one of the optional steps in this list -- is to --how should I say? Change the map a bit to either bring out key features of the geography or hide features that are getting in the way. And this will allow you to -- for example, if the local roads are cluttering your map, you can turn them off. If you would like to see the congressional districts in the area that you're looking at, you can turn them on.
The fourth step is actually creating the analysis, and that's where we'll spend most of our time today, creating analyses. And then step five is viewing the results, both the map and the report. Step six, which is also an optional step, if you want -- if you like the results you can save them as separate files on your desktop or you can print them out; that's up to you. And finally, if we're looking at this as a full process, we refine the analytical question and start over.
Again, this is a general way to think about the application. And as you'll see now in the live demo, we also move quickly through some of these steps in an integrated fashion.
Okay. Thanks for allowing -- for following along for the introductory slides. I'll now hand it over to Heath Hayward for the main act, a live demonstration of OnTheMap. Heath?
HEATH HAYWARD: Hello and now welcome to the live demonstration portion of the OnTheMap Version 3 webinar. Throughout this demonstration I will use specific analytical questions to explore both the general process and the many flexible options available to users in this new version.
So let's say that I'm interested in learning more about workers living in Aurora, Colorado. Now that I have defined my place of interest I will type "Aurora" directly into the Place Name search here in the OnTheMap entry page. Notice that I could also click directly in the map below to zoom to a regional scale or to change this setting here and to view the text only mode. And here I can search for a place name within the text only tool.
But today let's stick with the regular map mode and I'll click Enter. So now we are looking at the new OnTheMap interface with the map viewer here in the center and the control panel here, over on the left. The Search tab is active within the control panel, showing the search results for Aurora. As you can see, all geographic layers with the word "Aurora" in the name will appear. If you wan to receive search results for only a specific geographical area, change the setting in this dropdown box from "all place names" to the desired layer type. And as you can see, even if the layer doesn't have -- the search for Aurora doesn't return any results, you can still see all of the different available layers, from 110th congressional districts to WIRED regions to workforce investment areas.
I'll click on Aurora, Colorado here under the Cities and Towns category and the application will center the map viewer on this city. Let's quickly zoom out from Aurora in order to better understand the region and to test out the new navigation tools. If I click twice on the minus sign at the bottom of the scale ladder tool I will zoom out two fixed zoom levels. I can also pan the map by dragging it with my mouse to the right. Now we can see the whole Denver/Aurora metro area. To quickly get back to Aurora, simply click on the name in the Search tab over here on the left.
Before I begin my analysis I can check the Layers tab to see if there are any additional geography layers I wish to add to the base map. The layer itself and the labels can be turned on separately, and you'll notice there's two separate boxes here for the Label and then for the Layer. For example, here are the zip codes for the Aurora area. Notice that it refreshes the map automatically. There's no "update map" button. Every time the checkbox is clicked it automatically updates the map viewer. We won't need these for analysis, so I won't leave them turned on.
You may notice some layers are grayed out or italicized. If the checkbox is grayed out -- like for State Legislative Districts here -- it means that the layer is not currently available in the application. If the layer name is gray and italicized it means the layer is not available at the current zoom level. Let me show you what that looks like if we zoom out one. And you won't be able to see the local roads and you can see here that it is gray and italicized. You can turn on the layer and the labels, although they will not appear in the map viewer until the appropriate zoom level is reached.
Now I'm going to click on the Analysis tab here. The heart of the OnTheMap application lies in this tab. Through four steps we will shape the resulting map overlays and reports to fit our workforce question.
The first step in the Analysis tab has four data settings: live or work, years, job type, and labor market segments. My original question was to learn more about workers living in Aurora. I will select home/residential area for the first choice. I can select up to three years of data so let's take advantage of that option and choose 2006, 2004, and 2002. Let's leave the default job type in labor market segment: all jobs and all workers. We will discuss the new feature, labor market segments, later in the webinar. To continue to the next step I'll simply click "next" up here at the top of the control panel, or I can select from any of the four steps here in the dropdown box.
The second step, called the "study area selection" offers several tools for choosing our selection area for analysis. Notice the instruction here at the top. It informs us that we will be selecting a home area. This is a direct reflection of the "live or work" choice we made back in step one. There are five selection tools here as well as a "reuse earlier selection" option. No matter the selection tool used, OnTheMap will aggregate workforce data for all census blocks within the area covered by the selection shape.
I'll click here on Layer to open the layer selection tool. Virtually every geography that can be searched or added to the base map is available here for selection. I will leave the default "cities and towns" and the default selection method called "points." Using this new method users can select multiple features within the selected layer. For example, by using my mouse left click once in Aurora -- and you can see the outline is highlighted in blue. Let's say that I want to add Denver to that. I'll just click in Denver as well. Or I can add in Centennial as well. So now you can see that I've added three separate cities just with three simple clicks of my mouse.
Let's clear that selection and take a look at the freehand selection tool. While holding down the left mouse button I can draw the exact selection area I desire. Here I will draw a shape that encompasses the area between Interstate 70, Interstate 225 and Highway 30 here in North Aurora. As you can see, my drawing leaves much to be desired.
Instead of completely redrawing the shape I will click on the edit shape method, then click in the area I have drawn. Now I can edit the vertices that bound my shape. Two types of vertices appear around the edge of the shape. There are actual vertices that bound the shape and potential new vertices which are semitransparent and appear in between every real vertex. So I can hover over one of the real vertexes, which are the solid orange border around them, and I can drag it and drop it. Or, if I'm hovering over it and I don't like that vortex, I can click the delete button and get rid of that vortex. Also, you can see here in the middle there is one of the semitransparent vertexes. Let's say I want to add that. We'll just click on it and drag it. You'll also see that in between every real vertex is another potential vertex ready to be added if the user desires. So when I'm finished editing I'll just simply click in the middle of the shape to save those changes.
If we have time later in the webinar we can explore the remaining selection tools, the ring-buffer tool, donut, and plume. I encourage you to spend some time after the webinar exploring the different selection tools available -- the different selection areas that are available using these tools.
One last point about the selection tools. If one of the tools is active -- as you can see the freehand selection tool now is -- I will not be able to navigate around in the map as I'm used to doing. The application will think that I'm trying to make a selection. So I'm trying to end the map here, but it thinks I'm trying to make a selection. Make sure that you activate the Navigate tool here in pink to resume the regular applications with the map viewer. Now you can see that I can drag the map very slow.
All right. So if you remember, my original analysis was to select the city of Aurora. Let me clear that selection from the layer selection tool and I'll click once inside Aurora. You can see that the area is selected because of the blue outline as well as the shape in the area/shape preview box. Again, I'll click "next" here at the top of the control panel to move on to the next step.
Step three of the Analysis tab covers more advanced selection options and is optional. This step allows for the creation of a paired area or complex modifications to the initial study area. These topics will be saved for more advanced webinars. I will keep the default called "skip this step" and click "next" to continue to step four.
The final step, called "map overlay and report" highlights the two analysis types offered in OnTheMap. In Version 3 an analysis generally refers to a map overlay and report combination. This means that with all of the choices already made by the user there are still two different types of map overlays and two different types of reports available for viewing. The area profile analysis -- shown here -- only shows information about the selection area, also called the origin. The Shed analysis shows information about where workers are going, also called the destination.
Again, notice how our analysis options available to us here in step four take into account the "live or work" selection we made back in step one. We are choosing between a home area profile analysis or a commute Shed analysis. This smart text will also refer to a particular neighbor market segment or a paired area in instances where those are chosen. Let's keep the default analysis type, called "home area profile analysis," and the default map precision. To generate the analysis, simply click Go up here in the top right of the control panel.
A quick note about map precision. This option is currently under development and most users will want to leave the default option selected. But when selecting very large areas, changing this setting to county or track may result in faster overlay and report generation. Also, I could have entered a customized report title back in step four. I chose to ignore this option so we can view the standard titles that accompany each analysis type.
Now that our process is complete the Results tab becomes active in the control panel. There are three sections in the Results tab: Overlay Controls here at the top, Report Output Options in the middle, and Analysis Settings here at the bottom. Point and thermal overlays for the most recent year, 2006, an outline around the selection area here called "selection outline," will be active in the overlay control panel. I will turn off thermals for 2006 by un-checking the appropriate box here.
Let's spend some time talking about the area profile map we are currently viewing. It is important to note that this map overlay type is new in Version 3. We are currently viewing where workers live in Aurora, regardless of where they go to work. Each purple dot represents one census block. Let's click on the map key tab to see how many workers are residing in each census block. Between one to five workers in the smallest dots and approximately 600 to 1,100 workers in the largest dots. We can clearly see that virtually all workers living in Aurora are living in the central western portion of the city, very close to Interstate 225 here and the Denver city border.
Let's go back to the Results tab and turn on the thermal overlays for all three years. I'll also turn off points for 2006 and un-check the box for points here next to the animate button. Let's click this animate button to see each year's thermals cycle in the map viewer. Thermals represent spatial averages of worker density, calculated as workers per square mile. Looking at the respective contours for each year it doesn't appear that there has been significant residential shifts in Aurora during the four-year span we are viewing. When done viewing the animation, make sure to click "stop" to end the animation cycle.
Now let's look at the report that comes with the area profile analysis. Here in the middle of the Results tab I'll click on HTML, the first output option for the reports. Here the report is popped up. As in Version 2, the area profile report displays job totals, three age breakouts -- 30 or younger, 31 to 54, 55 and older -- as well as three earnings breakouts and 20 two-digit NAICS industry sectors.
Let's take a quick look at the characteristics of workers living in Aurora. Workers age 55 and older comprised 2.4 percent more of the workforce in 2006 than it did in 2002, which amounts to an increase of almost 5,000 older workers. Also worth noting is the increasing number of retail trade and healthcare workers residing in Aurora over this same time period. If I would have selected a work area profile report, quarterly workforce indicators -- also called QWIs -- would be included at the bottom of this report. Users will note that there is a table at the bottom of every report type called Report Settings, which is an exact replica of the Analysis Settings table that you see at the bottom of the Results tab. For a reminder of the choices made in each analysis please refer to the information stored in these tables.
So now that we have viewed map overlays showing where workers live in Aurora, and a report showing their demographic and industry characteristics, let's look and see where these workers are employed. Keeping all other settings the same I will go back to the analysis tab and I'll select Commute Shed Analysis here in step four. Let's also customize the rollup areas which will show up in the resulting Shed report. I'll uncheck states, click on zip code here. It's important to note that only three rollups are available in Shed reports currently. And I'll come up and simply click Go to regenerate an analysis.
The Commute Shed Analysis, which will display employment locations of workers residing in Aurora -- in the Commute Shed the home location, in this case Aurora, is the origin and we are mapping the destinations, which are employment locations. This is the map overlay type Version 2 users are more accustomed to seeing.
Using the zoom ladder tools in the upper left corner of the map viewer, let's zoom out one step and re-center the map over the Denver metro area by panning slightly to the left. Let's turn off points for 2006. From this view we can clearly see hot spots for where workers living in Aurora are employed. There are high density employment locations here in central Aurora, in downtown Denver here, the Denver tech center, as well as along the industrial corridor along Interstate 70 here, and at the Denver International Airport.
To see the work locations in more detail, let's open the Commute Shed Report by clicking on the Excel link in the middle of the report output options. As you can see, a nicely formatted spreadsheet appears, ready for more in depth analysis or further calculations. The top 10 employment cities, counties and zip codes are shown for all three years of data. We can clearly see that under 20 percent of the workers living in Aurora also work in Aurora. But 34 percent of workers residing in Aurora commute to work in Denver. Notice that the Report Settings information is stored in a separate worksheet, down at the bottom of the spreadsheet. You can see those.
Before I hand it back over to Matthew I'd like to point out a few other tools that are available to the top right of the map viewer. From left to right these include Hide/Show tabs, Print Map, Link to Me, Previous, and Clear Overlays. The Hide/Show tabs allows users to toggle the control panel on and off, allowing the map viewer to occupy the full screen if desired. The Print Map button is fairly self-explanatory, although we are currently working to develop more accurate and flexible map outputs for this feature. The Link to Me button can be very useful for sharing or saving analyses. Simply click the button and all of the current analysis settings on the screen will be saved into your Web browser's URL, which can then be copied, pasted into an e-mail, or pasted into any Web browser.
The Previous button will return the map viewer to the previous (extent ?), allowing users to quickly go back to the previous scale or map location. I'll do a quick demonstration of that. I zoomed out once. Click the Previous button and it takes me right back to where I was. And finally, the Clear Overlays button, which will clear all overlays from the map viewer. This includes points, thermals, the selection outline, and selection filled. So you can see that in action. Although clearing overlays is not necessary, many users may prefer to have a clean base map before beginning a new analysis.
At this point I'm going to turn it back over to Matthew and he's going to take a look at some other kinds of analysis.
MR. GRAHAM: Thanks, Heath. So as you've seen, some of the basic features of OnTheMap are quite different from OnTheMap Version 2. What I'm going to do is do a couple of different analyses that may be of interest to you which hopefully will help you remember and see the uses of the different options that Heath showed you.
The first thing I'm going to do is go back to the search, which can be accessed just here. And I'm going to start a new search and locate a different area of interest. So I'll type in part of a name and my area of interest is going to be Charlotte, North Carolina. So I clicked on Charlotte, North Carolina link in the Search tab and that brought up a map of the Charlotte area.
Now I'm going to go to the Layers tab and I'm going to clean out of the things that I think may be distracting or some of the things that I personally find distracting in this particular zoom. One of those things are the county labels. Today I'm not very interested in the counties themselves. I'll leave the county lines on but I don't need to see what the names of the counties are. And I'm also going to turn off the local roads and the major highways. So that just leaves the interstates on. That's enough reference for me. If we need to see one or the other of those layers we'll turn them back on later.
Now, once I have the map set as I want to see it, I'll move to the Analysis tab. And again, I'm going to start on step one, just where Heath started. This time I'm going to choose Workplace Area. Now, that's already chosen for me and I'll leave it set there. Then I'm going to choose the latest three years of data available, 2006, 2005, and 2004. I'll leave it set at all jobs and all workers for now. We'll change one of those a bit later. So as soon as I'm happy with my data settings in step one, I'll click the Next button.
My next job is to select my actual area of interest. The area I want to focus on right now is everything around Interstate 77 between I-85 and I-485, so basically the interstate running through the heart of Charlotte. Well, there is no layer, per se, that really gets at that area so I'll be using one of the other tools. I could use the freehand tool and get exactly the area I want, but I'm more focused on getting the interstate and the areas surrounding the interstate. For this purpose I'll use the ring-buffer tool.
Under the ring-buffer you can see there are three options as well as a text box. The first two choices are the type of selection we can make; we can either make a point selection or a line selection. The third box allows us to modify the line in a similar way to what Heath did modifying the freehand shape. And the text box allows us to input a number as a buffer radius around either a point or a line.
So if I put in "3" for the radius and I leave "point" checked, I can click -- we'll just wait for the webinar software to give you what I'm seeing -- so enter three miles, leave it on point and if I click somewhere in Charlotte -- there we go -- I will get a point and a selection area that is a three-mile radius circle around that point. But that's not really what I'm interested in. Again, I want to see the people working -- that is the workplaces -- around Interstate 77. So I'm going to use the line tool and I'm going to ask for a one-mile radius. Now it's time to draw that line. I'll start at the intersection of I-77 and I-85 and I'll draw a line going south. Now, I'm being very careful here. I don't necessarily need to be because I can go back and modify the line. But what you see now is a one-mile buffer around I-77 between those two interchanges. Okay. I'm pretty happy with that selection. I don't need to edit it so let's move on.
I'll click the Next button and again we get the Advanced Area Selection tab. Again, I'm going to skip that because I'm happy with the selection I have and I'm not interested in making a paired area analysis this time around.
So we'll go on to the fourth tab, the Map Overlay and Report tab. And again we get two options, Work Area Profile Analysis and Labor Shed Analysis. This time I'm going to enter a title of my own in the Report Title box. So I will put "working within one mile of I-77 in Charlotte, North Carolina." And I'm going to leave it set on Work Area Profile Analysis to start. I want to see who's working in this buffered area. So I'm ready. I'll click Go and let it generate the analysis.
Okay. Now we see we've got points and thermals within that buffered region. If we want, we can click on this small link at the bottom of the overlay controls that says "zoom to selection." If I do that, the map will zoom in as close as it can to the selection area. So that allows us to see more detail within the map selection area.
Now, the points and thermals we see -- and I'm going to turn off the thermals just now -- represent where workers are working; that is, the work locations within the selection area. We can see that there's a large cluster here. So I captured part of the downtown area, but maybe not all of it since the points are getting close to the edge of my selection area. Now, I want to see who these workers are so I'm going to click on the -- this time I'll click on the View Report Only PDF. So instead of bringing up an HTML or an Excel spreadsheet, this will bring up a PDF page -- or two in this case -- of the report. And if you have and use your PDF software, you can take this and insert it right into another PDF document.
So we can see in this area there are about 113,000 jobs and a good share of them are high paying jobs. So almost 50 percent -- 46.6 percent -- of those jobs earn more than $3,400 a month. Charlotte is known as a financial services center and so we see 15 percent of the jobs are in finance and insurance. This is not typical of a lot of cities.
What I'm going to do now is go back to the application and change a couple of settings. I will leave my PDF available for later because I want to do a comparison. So this time I'm going to go back to the Analysis tab and I'm going to go to step one. Remember, this is where the data settings were chosen: live or work, the years of analysis, the job type, and the labor market segments. I'm interested not in the people who are high-earning, but I'm interested in the people that are low-earning; that is, those workers who earn $1,200 a month or less. So I want to see information about those particular workers.
Now, this is something that was not possible at all in OnTheMap Version 2. At the beginning of the webinar I said we had multiplied the data times 10 and this is one-tenth of that new data. So now we can do a full analysis using just workers who earn $1,200 a month or less. So I selected that segment of the working population and I go back to the dropdown. Everything else I want to keep the same -- same area, same every other setting -- and I just want to go back to the Map Overlay and Report. Again, I'm happy with the Work Area Profile Analysis choice and you will notice in here that the smart text has already picked up that the workers are the ones earning $1,200 a month or less. So it notices that we've changed the setting and it reflects that in the helpful text here.
The only thing I'm going to do on this page is I'm going to add a little note at the end of my title that says "$1,200 per month or less." That way I'll be able to tell the two reports apart just from the title, although the information is always available in the Report Settings box. So now I'm going to hit Go and again that will turn. And again we see that workers who earn $1,200 or less also work in the downtown area and along I-77. So the two maps are not very different, but what I want to see is in the report.
So again I will click the View Report Only PDF and a new tab will pop up. And now this report only shows those workers who earn $1,200 or less. We can see that immediately by going to the "jobs by earnings paid" box. The first line has all of the workers and the next two lines have no workers. We've selected one earnings segment. What we see here now are first, workers who earn $1,200 a month or less tend to skew young, that is, more young than the general population. We see here 39.4 percent are age 30 or younger. But if we look at the general population it's only 23.7 percent.
Now I'll go back to the low-income workers and I'll take a look at their industry breakdowns. Remember, we had a large portion of all workers working in the finance and insurance sector -- 15 percent. For low-income workers that has now dropped to 4.3 percent and suddenly we have a very large percentage working in administration, support, waste management, and remediation. I can't see it from this report, but I'll take a guess that most of these workers are actually in administration and support, which includes office services as well as temp workers -- the temp worker sector. So immediately now we have much more information available to us than we ever had in OnTheMap Version 2.
And finally, we could ask the companion question of where do the low-income workers live? And so I just go back to the Analysis tab, I click Labor Shed Analysis, and I'm going to leave the rollups the same as they're set already -- cities and towns, counties and states -- and then I click Go. One thing I will note is that as this spins the wait time that you will find generating these maps and map overlays and reports is directly proportional to the number of years that you have selected. So if you want a result very quick, choose one year -- choose the year of interest. But if you would like to see how things change over time, feel free to select three years of interest; just be prepared that you'll have to wait a little longer as it generates each year separately.
So now I see lots of points and thermals. I'm going to zoom out a few scales to see the region. Now, if you remember, Heath often clicked on the minus button here to zoom out one step at a time. In addition to doing that you can click directly on the scale ladder to go straight to the zoom level you want. So in this case I'm going to jump up three or four scales and that will take us out to a more regional picture. I'll turn off the points because they're a little busy for this zoom level. And there you can see the thermals of where low-income workers live; that is, the low-income workers who are employed within one mile of I-77.
Okay. Before I finish I just want to go back and point out that the labor segments -- and Heath will mention this in a minute or two -- include three age categories, three earnings categories, and three industry classes. If you're interested in one of these labor segments, you just choose whichever one you want. If you don't care and you want to see all of the workers, you choose all workers and then it will operate as did OnTheMap Version 2.
Okay. I'm going to turn it back to Heath now and we're going to return to the slide show -- that will be the end of our live demo -- for a few more slides and some more information.
MR. HAYWARD: Great. Thank you, Matthew. You may notice that we worked through much of the live OnTheMap application in place of 15 slides from the middle of the PowerPoint presentation. We encourage you to download the presentation and review those slides at your own convenience. They could be helpful tools for learning on your own.
As demonstrated in that last example, Version 3 allows users to analyze certain segments of the workforce. The available labor force segments roughly compare to the characteristics displayed in the Area Profile Reports, except 20 industry breakouts that have been combined into three industry classes. And you can see the different NAIC sectors that compose each of these down here in the notes. You can see "goods producing" includes four different NAICS categories, and so on.
A selection of one of the labor market segments in the Data Settings step of the Analysis tab will narrow the scope of the analysis for both the map overlay and the reports, as Matthew showed. Users should note that an area profile report is not available when a paired area and labor market segment are chosen.
With this new functionality Version 3 is able to answer increasingly complex workforce questions, such as where do workers aged 30 and younger live who are employed in a particular geographic area? Or how many jobs in the goods-producing industry grouping are located within 5, 10, and 20 miles of a planned employment transit center or transit stop? In a workforce investment area what are the age and earnings characteristics of workers employed in the trade, transportation and utilities industry grouping?
By creating a paired area, which we did not go through today, users can ask questions like how many workers live in the suburbs and work in the city? Or how many live in the city and work in the suburbs? Those questions could also have been answered using OnTheMap Version 2, but with the addition of area profile reports prepared areas Version 3 is able to answer more complex questions like what are the age, earnings, and industry characteristics of workers who commute between two neighboring counties? Or what percentage of high income earners live and work within a certain city, versus those who commute to a rival city?
MR. GRAHAM: Okay. This is Matthew again. I'm going to step back in for the last few slides and just walk you through a couple of examples that we've done here at the Census Bureau over the last few weeks and months in response to several things that have been happening in the news. These particular examples primarily reflect emergency preparedness issues because that's what tends to make the news. And they should give you a good idea of what this tool can do, not only for emergency preparedness but also for other questions.
In this tab we -- or in this slide -- we see the Louisiana and the Gulf Coast and what I did here was I found out the information about Hurricane Gustav and its actual tracked path as it came off the coast and entered Louisiana and moved up into the U.S. I got an image of the path and I sat it next to my desk and I used the image of the path to draw a buffered line from the Gulf into Louisiana and up towards the northwest corner of Louisiana.
In this case I buffered the path with a 50-mile radius and I was curious how many jobs there and we found out 840,000 jobs were in this path. Now, this is from 2006. In addition, I should note that for the purposes of display and having a very clean display I selected census tract for the map precision. That sometimes for these regional areas, one, will make the map generate faster; and two, may result in a cleaner display of points or thermals.
Here's another example. As I was putting these slides together last week the latest hurricane was Hurricane Hanna, which is now already gone and replaced in the news by Ike. But at that point Hurricane Hanna was coming up to hit the southeast Atlantic Coast. So during the day on the fourth of September I downloaded this map from the National Weather Service and it shows the projected path from 2 p.m. on the fourth through 8 a.m. tomorrow. Now, certainly we don't have data on Canada and I wasn't interested in doing the whole East Coast because, as we know, by the time it got through New England it was simply heavy rain. Not that that is a good thing, but the primary concern was for the Southeast Coast.
So I took this map and I identified a few points in the map, those points down here near the Bahamas, off the coast of Florida, off the coast of South Carolina, and in North Carolina. I identified these are the key points for the analysis and then what I did was I tried to recreate them. So I put some points down here near the Bahamas, off the coast of Florida, off the coast of South Carolina, and then my final point was up here in North Carolina. And what I used was the plume tool. And this is just like the line buffer tool only I'm allowed to select two radius, a small one at the beginning -- well, it could be a large one at the beginning -- and then another one at the end. In this case, I started with a 20-mile buffer and I ended with a 150-mile buffer. And in this path along the Southeast Coast that included South Carolina, North Carolina, and parts of Virginia, I found that there were 3.9 million jobs in 2006. I also added in -- and although it may not be clear in the webinar, if you download this presentation you should be able to see this small report -- it's a small listing of the area profile; specifically the work area profile for this path.
Finally, I'll mention two older examples that are related to OnTheMap, but a little more advanced examples of what we have done, and what really anyone with the proper GIS tools could do. On the top left is a map of Northern California and the wildfires that hit Northern California earlier this year. On the bottom right is a map of Des Moines, Iowa and some of the flooding that occurred there earlier this year. In both cases we used OnTheMap data, but not the OnTheMap application. That is, all of the data that sits within the application is public use. This data specifically was from OnTheMap Version 2. We used OnTheMap data; we brought it into our own GIS tool here, and created these very detailed maps that allowed us go block by block and select individual areas, which was very useful for widely spread phenomena like the fires or the flooding.
I'm not going to talk too much about it today, but I will note that OnTheMap data for Version 3 will be posted on a public site and you'll be able to find out more information about how to download that data for yourself by going to the Help pages for OnTheMap.
(Pause.)
Okay. We've come to the end of the slides and the formal webinar presentation. I want to take a minute or two here to thank a few people, specifically the Employment and Training Administration, especially Gay Gilbert, Janet Sten, and Tony Dais. Tony has been probably the biggest cheerleader I have ever seen, and I want to thank him very much for all his efforts at drumming up interest in this application and our data. I also want to thank the state partners and the LMI agencies who work with us. Truly without them there would be no data and there would be no OnTheMap.
Coming soon. So we've released OnTheMap Version 3, and we've got a few more tricks up our sleeve that should be coming later this fall. Those include some additional layers, specifically state legislative districts, school districts, traffic analysis zones or TAZs, tribal subdivisions, and Alaska native regional corporations. We've also got some more tweaks and improvements to the user interface. We think it's pretty good but we know we can improve. And we're working on additional documentation, which means we need your help; because without your help we don't know what needs to be documented. That is, we're working on many different pieces of documentation; some of them walkthroughs, some of them demonstrations, some of them just glossary entries to help users along. If you see something that's missing or something you think should be documented please let us know.
How do you let us know? You e-mail us. For general questions, comments, or feedback, please send an e-mail to ces.local.employment.dynamics@census.gov. Additionally, you can find us and the OnTheMap application at the Local Employment Dynamics Web site. That's lhed.did.census.gov.
And finally, if you're interested in hearing more about OnTheMap and the developments that are coming about OnTheMap, you can use this address here to sign up for the OnTheMap mailing list. To sign up for the OnTheMap mailing list -- and you will get periodic updates about OnTheMap and what's happening there. And again, let me emphasize your questions are important to us. They will help us develop Frequently Asked Questions, improve the help documentation, and possibly improve what you're going to see in Version 4.
Now I guess we are going to take a minute or two. We have a couple of polling questions we'd like users to answer. I think I'll let Gary take that over before we go to the question and answer session.
MR. GONZALEZ: All right. Thanks, Matt. I'm just bringing up two polling windows that you can participate with. The first is, "After seeing this introductory webinar about the OnTheMap Version 3, how would you rate OnTheMap's ease of use?" And you can choose from very easy, somewhat easy, somewhat difficult, to very difficult. Mouse over and left-click the option that you'd like.
And once you've completed that, directly beneath that polling question, there's a third. It reads, "After seeing this introductory webinar about OnTheMap Version 3, how easy would be it be for you to help someone else learn how to use OnTheMap?" So based off today's session, would that be very easy, somewhat easy, somewhat difficult, or very difficult. Just take a few seconds to go ahead and make your decision.
MR. GRAHAM: Okay. Thanks, Gary. I think as people as finishing those polling questions -- and I appreciate those responses on those polling questions; they are useful for us -- I think we're going to go to the question and answer session.
Again, if you have a question for us, please type it into the chat Q&A box and the moderators will pass it along to us. We'll try and answer as many questions here in the last 15 minutes as we can, or at least before we get cut off by Gary and the other moderators. And here we go. We'll make sure to read the question as -- before we answer it. Which question do you want to read?
MR. HAYWARD: There was a question referring to whether zip codes can be easily revealed in the example of the one mile buffer around I-77 in Charlotte. The zip codes can be revealed by in the map viewer -- you can turn them on and see points and thermals as they fit inside different zip codes, and you can also in the Shed report two zip codes for the Shed output. So you'll able to see the top 10 zip codes where workers are either going to work or where they're residing. So you can see zip codes both in the map and in the reports.
MR. GRAHAM: Additionally, if you were concerned specifically about the zip codes located around I-77, instead of doing a ring buffer select, you could do a layer select and individually click through all the zip codes near I-77 that you wanted to include in your analysis.
The next question. "Are there plans for more industry groups beyond version 3?" This is an answer that we don't have something concrete for you yet. We would like to provide more detail. There are several hurdles to that. Some of them are technological and some of them have to do with data quality as well as data confidentiality. There are several different bars that we have to meet to produce data and release it in OnTheMap. So I think we would like to give you more detail and we hope that in the future we can give you more detail.
Let's see. The next question, "What sort of functionality exists to work backwards into the data? For example, to find where in a region or in the U.S. retail job growth over the last two years is strongest." For this question, what I will do is point you towards the LEHD Web site here and some of the other tools that can be found on the Web site. OnTheMap is just one tool to present the data provided by the Local Employment Dynamics partnership. There are two other main tools there. They're called QWI Online and Industry Focus, and I will try to use my tools here -- -- those are the names -- well, you got part of the names. I'm trying to give you the rest.
They're called QWI Online and Industry Focus, and those two tools can be used to help you determine more regional analyses, that is, determine for an area what is the most important sector, or what regions of the country are the highest performing sectors, given certain listings.
MR. HAYWARD: It's also possible that once the raw data is available at the Virtual RDC, the research data center at Cornell, it would be possible to take the raw data, aggregate it into whatever region you'd like, let's say, counties, and then basically sort by the highest job growth. I think that would be a pretty roundabout way to do it. I think Matt's suggestion of using Industry Focus would probably be the best way.
There's a question here, "Why is only one category available at one time?" I imagine that refers to being able to select two labor segments at once.
MR. GRAHAM: The answer to that has to do, again, with data quality and confidentiality. You'll notice that when I selected a single labor segment, I was able to see the earnings breakdown for that labor segment, the age breakdown for that labor segment, and the industry breakdown for that labor segment.
We do not allow crosses of variables beyond that because: one, we want to make sure that the data you're seeing is statistically significant; that is, we're not giving you junk data -- and we have to guarantee confidentiality; that is, we must protect the confidentiality of the people who provide the data to us. Those two factors balance what we can supply in the application. We are constantly improving the confidentiality protection measures, and as we do that, we can supply more detailed data. But at this point, that's about all we can supply.
DR. WU: This is Jeremy. I want to jump in for 30 seconds here, too. The establishment of the LED partnership and also its application was to meet the challenge of having analytically valid data available at a very detailed level, and at the same time, protect confidentiality. And quite frankly, ten years ago it was considered an almost impossible task, and therefore the protection of confidentiality is typically by way of suppression. And part of the LED partnership, working with the different state partners, the development of state-of-the-art confidentiality protection measures has been one of the key features in developing these applications.
So when you look at some of these numbers that have never been available before at this kind of detail -- and obviously the interest is to get into deeper detail. Some of them may be possible, given time, given the tests and evaluations that we go through. But at the same time, I think I'd like to point out that this kind of level of detail has never been available before. This is for the first time. And so I do want to point out that that is the status that we're in at this point.
MR. GRAHAM: All right. I'm going to try and move through a number of questions here pretty quickly to get a few off the slate. Someone asked about industries down to the NAICS six-digit level, and I will just refer you to the lengthy answer that Jeremy and I just gave. That is a lot of detail, and right now that is not possible.
Next question. "Will the data in these maps reflect pre- and post-Katrina data in New Orleans?" The answer is yes; that is, if you select data years before Katrina hit -- and I should note that these data years are linked to the second quarter of the year. So if you select data in years before Katrina then you'll get pre-Katrina information; and if you select years after Katrina you will get post-Katrina information.
The next question. "Are the 2005-2006 origin destination datasets available for download?" The answer is not yet, but they will be. Please continue to check the help information on the OnTheMap help pages.
And a similar question about the Cornell site -- about the data download. And it's typically about six weeks until that data is posted and available for download. That is what it has been in the past and we expect that that will be the approximate timeline going forward.
The next question. "Can you change the colors on the map?" The answer is currently no. There is a separate color for each year of data and those are fixed.
MR. HAYWARD: There's a question that asks, "Are concentric rings still available?" During the process of creating the one modular process for all analysis for OnTheMap 3, it was decided that the concentric rings was cluttered. We do realize that many people were happy with that tool and used it in OnTheMap 2. We're going to be developing a one-pager that goes through a step-by-step process for how to recreate the concentric ring analysis. And we think that with the ease of use and being able to go back into the Analysis tab, change one setting -- it's a very simple process. So I think that's something that will satisfy concentric ring fans.
MR. GRAHAM: The next question is, "Does the map include government ownership?" And I assume that references federal employees. Currently OnTheMap does not include federal employees. The LED partnership is working on a series of initiatives to improve the dataset. One of them is bringing federal employees into the system. We expect that by 2010 federal employees will be in the database. The reason federal employees are not in the database is all of this data is sourced through unemployment insurance systems in the individual states and federal employees do not participate typically in those systems, or at least for their federal job. If they have a separate job outside of federal employment that is a private, state, or local government job, then those jobs will be included.
MR. HAYWARD: We've got a question here. "How soon can we get 2007 data?" We're planning to move the OnTheMap Version 4 release back slightly next year in order to perhaps accommodate 2007 and perhaps 2008. But it won't be until the next version of OnTheMap that 2007 data will be available.
DR. WU: It would help if we hear from the users their priorities and their needs. And if more recent data are indeed desirable, if we hear about it, if they let us know, than we would plan accordingly. At this point we have heard some, so we're planning to add two years of data in the next version; in other words, 2007 and 2008 data should become available in 2009 version.
MR. GRAHAM: The next question is sort of an addendum to my answer about federal workers. Someone also asked about the self-employed and military. Self-employed is also an ongoing project within the LED partnership, and we are working on getting the self-employed into the database. Unfortunately, military will likely never be included in this particular dataset, for national security reasons.
DR. WU: We have not given up on that front. At least, that's what the Department of Defense has informed us.
MR. GRAHAM: Okay. "Is there a way to increase the number of contours in the thermals?" Currently there is no way to increase the number of contours in the thermals. The number of contours is hard-coded. But again, the more user feedback we get, these are always things that possibly could be changed in the future.
"How do you suggest training office staff?" Jeremy, I'll let you answer this one.
DR. WU: I guess this is a multiple-front question, because what we proposed is that we can start from the very simple -- relatively simple e-learning modules that will take 10, 15 minutes to documentation to webinars to in-class, face-to-face multiple day training. And in fact, there's a course for a whole semester in Cornell University. That's the range of possibilities that are available. So I would say it depends on your level of interest in terms of learning as to what may fit you. And there is also a question of cost and resource to support those trainings also.
MR. HAYWARD: I'm going to take one more quick question because it gets at some of these training issues. Someone noticed it was a little difficult to see some of the screens during the demo. We recognize that some of the smaller text and things were difficult to see through the webinar interface. Please download the PowerPoint and review that as a slideshow. There are a few simple animations in there. Also, please go to the LEHD/LED Web site and click on the Help links you'll see there after OnTheMap on Quick Links. There are some documents already in terms of training and in terms of walkthroughs, and in terms of learning more about the OnTheMap application. In the coming weeks we will be posting more and more material there.
So I think that's it unless my co-presenters have anything else to say. Thank you very much.
DR. WU: Thank you all. This is very helpful for us. Again, we emphasize the need for your input. We do respond according to user interests. So the more people there are, the more ideas they have, the higher the priorities they specify. Those are the items that we tend to respond to. The squeaky wheel does work in many ways, so please keep comments, feedback coming so that we can respond to them.
MR. HAYWARD: And one last thing. If we didn't get to your question in this session, we will be getting a transcript of all the questions that were submitted in the Q&A part here, and we will try and get to them, either in a FAQ or address them in the Help documentation somewhere. So don't think that your question will go unanswered. We'll look at it and try and synthesize them into answers for everyone. Thank you.
MR. GONZALEZ: So with that, on behalf of Workforce3One and today's webinar presenters I just want to conclude today's session by thanking you all for your time and we look forward to seeing you on future webinars. Have a good day, everyone.
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