Data sources and method

Census Bureau: American Community Survey

For each area we pull the 2020 to 2024 five-year estimates. The main table is C24070, which counts employed residents by industry and by class of worker, including people who work for themselves in an incorporated business and in an unincorporated one. We use it to estimate how many residents are self-employed and which industries they work in.

Housing and household figures come from tables B25077 (median home value), B25003 (owners and renters), B25064 (median gross rent), B25035 (median year built), B25024 (units in the structure), B25004 (vacancy, including seasonal use), B25103 (real estate taxes), B19013 (median household income), B01002 (median age), B01003 (population), B08301 (how people get to work, including working at home) and B15003 (education).

These are survey estimates, so each carries a margin of error. The margins are wider for smaller towns and for narrow groups such as one industry. Treat every figure as a good approximation, not an exact count. We describe the geography on each page, such as a city, a town, a county or a metro area, because the Census draws those lines differently from how people talk about a region.

Bureau of Labor Statistics: payroll data

For employers we use the 2024 annual averages from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages. It counts establishments that pay unemployment insurance taxes, along with their employees and total wages, by county or metro area and by industry. The location quotient compares an industry's share of local jobs with its share nationally, so a value above 1.0 means the industry is more concentrated here than in the country overall.

Payroll data leave out owners who have no employees, which is why we pair them with the Census estimates of self-employed residents. A sole proprietor with no staff is in the Census count and not in the payroll count.

Places, colleges and hospitals

Names of universities, colleges, health systems, military installations, ports and airports on each page are drawn from the area's public encyclopedia entry and checked against that text. We leave out names we could not confirm. Neighborhood and employer names in the older sections of each page were checked the same way, and sentences that failed the check were removed.

What these pages do not say

The pages do not publish rates, payments or loan terms, and nothing on them is a loan offer or a promise that any borrower will qualify. Programs differ by lender and by property, and a lender verifies income, credit, debts and ability to repay before any approval. If you spot a figure that looks wrong, tell us and we will check it against the source.