This repository contains the code and data needed to estimate the number of low-income jobs lost to COVID-19 in every tract in the US. The scripts read in data from Census LODES, the BLS, WA state unemployment figures, and other data sources to estimate the number of jobs lost in every industry for each Census tract in the US. The output data files of this repo power Urban's interactive web app visualizing the estimated low income jobs that will be lost to COVID-19. You can view the code for creating the web application at this Github repo.
We hope government support programs, and non-profit service providers use the web app and this data to more effectively dedicate resources - such as food, child care support, or cash assistance - to those who need it most.
Note: Starting from 6/5/2020, we are using a new methodology to calculate job loss based on national BLS CES and SAE data, instead of QCEW data and individual state data. To see the scripts and data used in the old methodology, you van view the previous commits on the master branch
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scripts/stores the relevant scriptsstatic/: scripts that need to be run once when the repo is cloneddynamic/: scripts that need to be run every time the underlying employment data from BLS or individual states are updated. We will update the data once a week on Thursdays until the May BLS release, after which we will update the data monthly in line with BLS data updates.update-master.R: The master R script which sets paramters, and sources all other scripts as needed. If you want to recreate our results, this is the only file you'll need to run.
data/stores the dataraw-data/stores raw data.small/stores data that can be pushed to Github. All manually compiled data needed to run the scripts are herebig/stores data that can't be pushed to Github, but will be downloaded in through the1-download-data-*scripts
processed-data/stores processed data which are outputted from the scripts, some of which will be written to Githubs3_final/: The final versions of the data that will be written to S3 and be made publicly available on the Urban Data Catalog.
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1-download-data.R: Downloads Census tract, states, PUMA, and CBSA data for the analysis and Census LODES data aggregated to the Census tract and available on the Urban Data Catalog -
2-produce-geo-files.R: Produces some intermediary geographic files including geojsons of all CBSA's tract, and counties in the US, a tract<>CBSA crosswalk, and a tract<>PUMA crosswalk -
3-produce-data-files-static.R: Produceslodes_joined.csvfrom the Census LODES data which is listing of the number of low income workers in every tract-industry combination in the US -
4-transfer-to-s3-static.R: Transfers a few static files to S3, mostly used in the data viz
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1-download-data-update.R: Downloads current BLS CES and SAE data. -
2v4a-job-loss-projected-forward-ces.R: Uses BLS CES data from the latest month, and for subsectors that are one month lagged, projects them forward using the change from their parent sectors. -
2v4b-job-loss-by-industry-ces-sae-ipums-update.R: Uses BLS SAE data and CES data to project lagged state employment data forward one month, and uses the relationship between previous month SAE to CES supersector data to project national level industry job loss estimates down to the state level. -
2v4c-job-loss-by-industry-ipums-update.R: Uses the CES to ACS crosswalk generated manually here at Urban to summarize state by detailed CES industry calculations to state by detailed ACS industry calculations. Crosswalk documentation and code may be found here: https://github.com/UrbanInstitute/ipums-acs-naics-standardization. -
2v4d-job-loss-by-industry-ipums-summary-update.R: Uses the state by detailed ACS industry job loss estimates and merges with the most recent 5 year ACS (2014-18) microdata from IPUMS USA to produce a microdata file that allows people to join with the ACS IPUMS file and produce their own estimates. Also produces PUMA by 2-digit NAICS job loss estimates for use in step 3. -
3-produce-data-files.R: Generates estimates of job loss by tract using 2017 LODES data from the Urban Institute Data Catalog, and job loss per PUMA files generated with the scripts in step 2. This file produces the main output used in the interactive data viz -job_loss_by_tract.geojsonwhich contains estimated job losses by industry for every tract in the US -
4-produce-summary-stats-update.R: Generates some summary stats and histograms about the distribution of the estimated job loss numbers by county/cbsa. These histograms are used to set breakpoints for the legends in our dataviz. Running this is completely optional and in most cases not needed - unless you plan on recreating our data viz -
5-create-sum-files-update.R: Summarizesjob_loss_by_tract.gejsonby CBSA, county, and whole USA. The main output files aresum_job_loss_county.geojson (& csv): Estimated job losses by industry for every county in the USsum_job_loss_cbsa.geojson (& csv): Estimated job losses by industry for every CBSA in the USsum_job_loss_us.geojson (& csv): Estimated job losses by industry for the entire United States There are two fields in these files called max, and tmax that are based on the breakpoints determined after script 4. Unless you are planning on recreating our data viz, you can safely ignore these columns
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6-transfer-to-s3.R: After files are written out and quality checked, this script transfers them to S3 in a publicly available bucket. Running this is completely optional and in most cases not needed.
For a complete list of caveats, see the technical appendix available from our web application.
See changelog.md for recent changes and updates.
Steven Ruggles, Sarah Flood, Ronald Goeken, Josiah Grover, Erin Meyer, Jose Pacas and Matthew Sobek. IPUMS USA: Version 10.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS, 2020. https://doi.org/10.18128/D010.V10.0
Contact Graham MacDonald at [email protected]