Using Census OnTheMap for site selection: jobs, workers, and the study area

Use Census OnTheMap to examine where covered jobs are located and how workers' home and workplace areas relate. Start with a question and a defined study area. Keep the year and job settings attached to the result so a colleague can reproduce it.

For site selection, useful questions include where people working in an area live, which nearby areas contain jobs, and how much employment lies outside the city boundary used in an initial search. These are different questions from how many people pass a storefront today or would apply for a new job.

Pick the analysis that answers the question

An Area Profile describes the selected home or workplace area. Destination Analysis looks at home or work destinations associated with the selection. Inflow/Outflow separates flows into, out of, and within an area. Census documents these as distinct analysis types. OnTheMap analysis definitions

For “where do workers employed here live?”, start with a workplace area and inspect home destinations. Reverse that orientation when asking where residents work. Record the orientation explicitly; a map of nearby jobs can look convincing while answering the wrong question.

Choose a geography you can explain

Use a city, tract, or custom area that fits the decision. Save the selected geography with the result. OnTheMap supports geographic selection and imported areas; Census provides guidance on its tools and outputs. OnTheMap help

A circular area is a distance boundary. It does not establish a drive-time catchment across the road network. A city boundary is an administrative choice. It does not establish where a store's customers or a facility's future workers will come from.

If the choice matters, compare two reasonable study areas and describe why you used them. Do not select the boundary only because it produces the largest number.

Keep job type and year consistent

OnTheMap distinguishes All Jobs from Primary Jobs. A primary job is the highest-paying job for a worker; the primary-job view uses one job per worker. Comparing an All Jobs result with a Primary Jobs result can change the count without any change in geography. Census job-type definitions

Record the chosen data year. A result from an earlier year should not be labeled as today's workforce. Before drawing conclusions about a changed employment center, check whether the period you selected could reflect that change.

Interpret a result without overselling it

Imagine a hypothetical workplace selection with 12,000 primary jobs: 3,000 associated with workers living inside the boundary and 9,000 with workers living outside it. The outside share is 9,000 divided by 12,000, or 75%.

That result would justify examining home destinations beyond the boundary. It would not show that 9,000 people drive past a proposed site every morning, work on site every weekday, or are available to hire. A retailer would still need evidence about visits and customer behavior; an employer would still need a labor-market assessment matched to the required roles.

Leave a reproducible analysis note

Business question:
Home or workplace orientation:
Selected geography and saved boundary:
Analysis type:
Data year and job type:
Any industry or other filters:
Count, denominator, and calculation:
Exported result / source link:
What the result supports:
What additional evidence the site decision needs:

Have another person reproduce the count before using it in a site memo. For a retail decision, combine the workforce question with a separate assessment of traffic counts and access, keeping the populations and time periods clearly labeled.