CSAs, or Combined Statistical Areas, are large rolled-up geographic classifications for America maintained by the United States Census Bureau. We've recently published a few posts on the distribution of developers and engineers in America using 2016 Census Data - today we extend the series to 166 CSAs.
In this post we've included an interactive table which breaks down the number and concentration of engineers and developers in the United States for the full year of 2015 (2016 data). By our estimates, 75.8% of all professional developers in the United States lived in one of these CSAs in the 2015 workyear.
Software Engineer and Developer Concentration by Combined Statistical Area (CSA)
Note a couple of interesting features of the table:
- Clicking on the column header allows you to sort ascending/descending
- You can toggle the visibility of columns below the table
- A number are turned off by default
Prefer your data raw? Download here.
Other Geographic Breakdowns for Software Engineer and Developer Concentration
As we mentioned in the introduction, this continues a series of posts on developer concentration (of course I'm interested - I'm an engineer...). Here's some quick links to other geographic breakdowns:
- Number of Developers in America by State
- Concentration of Developers in America by County
- Number of Developers in America by Zip Code
Keep an eye on this space - our next post will zoom out just a bit and look at CBSAs, or Core Based Statistical Areas. These are areas which cover at least 10,000 people in population, and break down metropolitan influence even further than CSAs.
Methodology for CSA Developer Distribution
Work on this piece started with the data from the Developers in America by Zip Code post. Next, we downloaded crosswalks from the University of Missouri's Geographic Correspondence Engine for ZIP/ZCTA to CSA (and CBSA), using 2012 population estimates.
After that, it's a simple run through the data to convert from ZIP codes to CSAs.
What do the Developer Category Breakdowns Mean?
You can't please everyone with your category definitions, so 'Category 1', 'Category 2' and 'Category 3' contain progressively more liberal definitions of 'developer'. Here are the exact census job code break downs:
Category 1
1000 Computer Scientists and Systems Analysts/Network systems Analysts/Web Developers 1010 Computer Programmers 1020 Software Developers, Applications and Systems Software 1060 Database Administrators
Category 2
1400 Computer Hardware Engineers 1410 Electrical and Electronics Engineers 2840 Technical Writers 4930 Sales Engineers 7900 Computer Control Programmers and Operators
Category 3
0820 Budget Analysts 0830 Credit Analysts 0840 Financial Analysts 1200 Actuaries 1220 Operations Research Analysts 1230 Statisticians 1240 Mathematical science occupations, nec 1800 Economists and market researchers 5920 Statistical Assistants
If you'd like a more/less strict breakdown, you can enable (and/or disable) columns below the table.
Developer and Software Engineer Distribution by CSA
Actually, this is a pretty fun way of breaking it down. By screening out a number of the locations under the Washington, D.C., Seattle, and San Francisco/San Jose sphere of influence you start to see some (at least to us) outliers by "Developer Percentage of Workforce" for Category 3:
- Madison-Janesville-Beloit, WI
- Huntsville-Decatur-Albertville, AL
- Bloomington-Pontiac, IL
Sure, those are generally smaller metros - but I don't think I would have put them in my top ten CSAs for concentration before working through the numbers. If you're from a smaller CSA - or you see something interesting in the data - we'd love to see what you're seeing on the ground and in the numbers!
