What is this dashboard?
This dashboard shows how many workers switched jobs between North Carolina and every other U.S. state and metro area each year, broken down by industry. It uses the Census Bureau’s LEHD Job-to-Job Flows (J2JS) data, which tracks workers who moved from one stable job to another, with no more than one quarter between jobs. Flows reflect where jobs are located, not where workers live.
How to use this dashboard
National Overview — Map of all U.S. states showing inflows, outflows, or net flow relative to NC. Use the controls to change the year, industry, and map mode. Click any state on the map to jump to its full profile. The industry tables below the chart show which sectors NC is gaining or losing workers in — click any row to filter the map and chart to that sector.
State Profile — Select a state, industry, and year. Stat boxes show worker volumes and wage comparisons. With All Industries selected, an industry gain/loss breakdown appears — click any row to filter to that sector and view which industries workers came from or switched into. With a specific industry selected, origin and destination industry tables appear.
Metro Profile — Select one of NC’s 17 metro areas, an industry, and a year to see worker flows between that metro and partner metros outside NC. The industry table highlights which sectors are gaining or losing workers and which metro areas are the top sources and destinations. With a specific industry selected, the top 10 partner metros by inflow and outflow volume appear.
Key definitions
- Inflow: A worker left a job in another state and took a job in NC.
- Outflow: An NC worker left for a job in another state.
- Net: Inflows minus outflows. Positive means NC received more workers than it sent.
- Industry: The two-digit NAICS sector of the NC-side establishment. Location and industry always reflect the job site, not where the worker lived.
- Annual Wage Change: Estimated change in annualized earnings between a worker’s prior job and their new job, weighted by worker count.
- Suppressed values (—): Some small industry flows and associated wages are withheld by the Census Bureau to protect worker privacy. These appear as — throughout the dashboard.
Data source
LEHD J2JS (Job-to-Job Flows, Stable Employment), U.S. Census Bureau. Covers UI-covered employment only — federal employees (civilian and military) and the self-employed are not included and are not reflected in any figures shown. Available at lehd.ces.census.gov.
Methodology
This dashboard uses the LEHD Job-to-Job Flows (J2JS), Stable Employment series. A flow is counted when a worker has earnings in three consecutive quarters at the origin job (confirming stable employment there) and earnings in three consecutive quarters at the destination job (confirming stable employment there), with the job change occurring within or between adjacent quarters. This full-quarter stability requirement excludes brief, seasonal, or transitional jobs at both ends of the transition — only ongoing employment relationships are counted.
Geographic attribution follows the establishment side: inflows are counted in the NC industry where the arriving worker’s new job is located; outflows are counted in the NC industry where the departing worker’s prior job was located.
Annual wage change is computed as the change in average annualized earnings between a worker’s origin job and their destination job, weighted by worker count across all flows in that cell. Raw earnings in the source data are quarterly; all values displayed are multiplied by four to show annualized figures. Suppressed cells are excluded from aggregation rather than treated as zero.
A note on wage figures: Wage figures are weighted averages across all quarters with non-suppressed earnings data. Where some quarters within a year are suppressed, the figure reflects available quarters only and may not represent the full annual average. Figures based on small worker counts are also more susceptible to outliers. Interpret wage figures for small industries or geographies with caution.
Annual figures sum flows across all four quarters of the reference year. A pair-year is only included if all four quarters are present.
