Cities: Employment

Studying jobs and employment in the cities in which I'm interested has not been the most fun part of my project.  In part because looking for jobs is hard work.  I've never felt like I was very good at job searches in the first place, and doing something I'm bad at makes me like it even less, which probably makes me even worse at it, and so on in the downward spiral.  (To combat this, I've been working hard on writing a better resume and figuring out my strengths and what I want out of a job with the help of friends and What Color Is Your Parachute?  Neither will guarantee an easy job search, but maybe they will make it an easier job search.)

Savannah's Cotton Exchange:  Currently not hiring.

This part of my research is also somewhat premature, in that until I have narrowed down the number of cities in which I will look for a job, I am not going to do a detailed job search.  At least one friend has suggested I look for a job regardless of the city, but um.... No.  City or cities first, jobs second.  Having said that, the general availability of jobs in a given city and the soundness of the city's economy will play a role in where it ranks on my list of preferred homes.  So some type of research was in order on the job and employment front.

My method was to learn about the major industries and employers in each city, and a general search for the number of available attorney positions.  Most of these jobs -- lawyer or no -- will not be for me.  But it's at least some type of gauge as to the opportunities available, even if only a handful of jobs in each place would suit me in the end.

The final reason this part of research was not fun was because, unlike a lot of my other research, very little made me say "oh, that's interesting!" or change any of my preconceived notions of any of the cities.  For example, the biggest cities have the most jobs.  The nation's capital needs the most lawyers.  Chicago and D.C. need attorneys who know the futures industry, but no where else does.

A stereotypical attorney:  All work and no play.

The only two things that surprised me in any way were the unemployment figures and the major employers in each city.  The latter category is remarkably uniform across all cities, as you'll see below.  And now for a really long post...

Quick survey of attorney positions (all types) from a handful of career sites: The numbers are number of jobs listed on Lawcrossing.com, USAJobs.gov, Monster.com, lawjobs.com, and indeed.com (two searches).

LA: 423, 2, 23, 16, 886, 1

Chicago: 466, 1*, 19, 62, 765, 11

Philadelphia: 241, 1, 31, 86, 554, 2

Columbus: 125, 1, 2, 2, 110, 1 [Slightly fewer jobs than I expected given size & seat of state government.]

DC: 893, 44, 5, 93, 1812, 12  [Most legal positions, not surprising.]

Denver: 189, 1, 5, 1, 301, 1

Portland: 134, 1, 3, 3, 154, 1

Raleigh: 96, 1, 1, 1, 101, 1

Cleveland: 122, 1, 2, 1, 155, 0 [Slightly more jobs than I expected, given size.]

Des Moines: 83, 1, 0, 1, 50, 0

Asheville: 10, 1, 0, 0, 6, 0

Can I avoid taking another bar exam if I practice law in the state? (Juristech.com) 

LA: NO

Chicago: NO

Philadelphia: NO

Columbus: YES

DC: YES

Denver: NO

Portland: NO

Raleigh: NO

Cleveland: YES

Des Moines: MAYBE (If I apply by late 2012.)

Asheville: NO  

Some legal positions do not require attorneys to be licensed in the state, such as some in-house positions or positions with the Federal Government. But most do, so I will plan on taking a new bar exam anywhere I move, except the few places I won't have to.

DC has a very liberal waive-in policy.  Ohio and Iowa allow waiving in if a lawyer has practiced for 5 of the preceding 10, or 5 of the preceding 7 years, respectively.

Most of the states I'm considering do not have reciprocity agreements with the state I'm licensed in – Maryland. That's bad.  What's good is that Maryland does not have any continuing legal education requirements, so for the past 12 years I've avoided having to take a bunch of classes that would have taught me nothing about my field and would have cost me money. So I say I break even in the good-state-to-be-licensed-in category. I might even come out ahead.

Texas's Statehouse.  I won't work here, but it's a pretty building.

Unemployment Rate: From Bestplaces.net. U.S. Average is 9.1%.

LA: 13.4% [The highest.  Does this have anything to do with the stereotype that LA is full of out-of-work actors, or is it something else?]

Chicago: 9.3%

Philadelphia: 9.9%

Columbus: 7.5%

DC: 10% [I do not know the rate of the entire metro area; it could be much different.]

Denver: 10.2%

Portland: 9.5%

Raleigh: 6.7% [North Carolina is doing really well.  At least the cities]

Cleveland: 10%

Des Moines: 8%

Asheville: 6.9% [Ditto.]

Major Industries (From city-data.com and simplyhired.com)

LA: Financial & banking, largest manufacturing center in the US, aerospace, entertainment, tourism, petroleum, fashion & apparel, US's largest port.

Chicago: Manufacturing, printing & publishing, finance, insurance, food processing, transportation & distribution center, futures industry.

Philadelphia: Computer-based businesses, finance, telecommunications, insurance, printing & publishing, tourism, refining, food. (Manufacturing is receding.)

Columbus: State government, higher education, banking, research, insurance, telecommunications, retailing, health care, the military, manufacturing, machinery, metal, printing & publishing, food processing. Local coal, natural gas, limestone and sandstone. U.S. Government is Columbus's 3^rd largest employer.

DC: Federal government, printing & publishing, national associations, lobbyists, non-profits. “The Washington area ranks first among all national metropolitan areas in federal procurement dollars.” Approx 1 in 5 works for the federal government.

Denver: Air transportation, telecommunications, aerospace, manufacturing, energy research, banking, major transportation & distribution hub. “More federal workers than any other metropolitan area except for the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.”

Portland: Export port, distribution center, technology.

Raleigh: Government, education, healthcare, high tech, medical, electronics, telecommunications equipment, clothing & apparel, food processing, paper, pharmaceuticals.

Cleveland: Manufacturing, heavy industry, transportation, healthcare, health science, insurance, retailing, utilities, banking, finance, engineering firms, biotechnology.

Des Moines: Manufacturing (using mostly local materials & most goods are exported out of city), insurance, biotechnology, fiber optic telecommunications, state government.

Asheville: Healthcare, schools, government, groceries, retail. (This from Wikipedia.org; info about Asheville was hard to find.)

Largest employers in each city: What I learned from this part of my research is that health care, government, schools and groceries are the largest employers pretty much everywhere!

Sorry about this really long and messy section.  There's too much here to make it look pretty.

Cleveland's West Side Market.  Way more fun than a normal grocery!

LA: from LAAlmanac.com

Kroger Co. (Grocery)	140,000
County of Los Angeles	109,500
Los Angeles Unified School District	104,900
City of Los Angeles	56,200
Federal Government*	48,100
Kaiser Permanente	34,100
State of California (non-education)	30,500
University of California, Los Angeles	28,400
Northrop Grumman Corp.	19,100
Boeing Co.	14,400
Long Beach Unified School District	13,100
Target Corp.	13,000
University of Southern California	13,000
Bank of America	12,200**
Walt Disney Co.	11,200**
Home Depot	10,000
Metropolitan Transit Authority (L.A. Co.)	9,700
Providence Health & Services	9,700
Vons	9,600
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center	9,300

Chicago: Chicagobusiness.com (Numbers unavailable)

US Govt

Chicago Public Schools

City of Chicago

Cook County

Advocate Health Care

State of Illinois

AT&T

Provena Health

Walgreens

U of Chicago

JP Morgan Chase

United Continental Airlines

Abbot Labs

Wal-Mart

American Airlines

U of Illinois Chicago

Chicago Transit Authority

Northwestern U

Archdiocese of Chicago

Jewel-Osco (Grocery)

Philadelphia: Philly.com (2009) (Don't think this includes government or K-12 schools)

1	University of Pennsylvania and Penn Health System	31,000
2	Jefferson Health System and Thomas Jefferson University	24,600
3	Lockheed Martin Corp.	13,300
4	Comcast Corp.	13,000
5	Temple University and Health System	12,900
6	Merck & Co. Inc.	12,000
7	Wal-Mart Stores Inc.	11,700
8	United Parcel Service Inc.	11,500
9	Catholic Health East	11,400
10	Christiana Care Health System	10,300
11	Supervalu Inc. (Grocery)	10,100
12	Archdiocese of Philadelphia	10,100
13	Wakefern Corp. (Shoprite)	10,000
14	DuPont Co.	9,800
15	Aramark Corp. (Food)	9,800
16	Children's Hospital of Philadelphia	9,700
17	Vanguard Group Inc.	9,400
18	Wawa Inc. (Convenience stores)	8,200
19	Drexel University	8,200
20	Verizon Communications Inc.	8,100

Columbus: Wikipedia.org (2004 numbers)

The State of Ohio	26,037
The Ohio State University	17,361
United States Government	13,300
JPMorgan Chase	12,130
Nationwide	11,293
OhioHealth	8,398
Columbus City Schools	8,024
City of Columbus	7,919
Limited Brands (clothing)	7,200
Honda of America Manufacturing, Inc.	6,350
Franklin County	6,218
Wal-Mart Stores	6,100
Mount Carmel Health System	5,558
Kroger Company (grocery)	4,632
Wendy's International, Inc. (food/retail)	4,500
American Electric Power	3,900
Huntington Bancshares Inc.	3,500
AT&T Ohio	3,000
Ross Products Division, Abbott Labs	2,800
Nationwide Children's Hospital	2,706

DC: From DC Government's 2011 official audit. Does not include government jobs. Or numbers.

Georgetown U

GWU

Washington Hospital Center

Children's National Medical Center

Howard U

Georgetown U Hospital

American U

Fannie Mae

Catholic U

Providence Hospital

Howard U Hospital

Sibley Memorial Hospital

GWU Hospital

Denver: From the Denver Business Journal

1.	King Soopers (Grocery)	15,928
2.	Qwest Communications	14,400
3.	Centura Health	12,377
4.	Safeway (Grocery)	12,000
5.	HealthOne	9285
6.	United Airlines	7700
7.	Wells Fargo Bank West N.A.	6000
8.	Coors Brewing Co.	5500
9.	Exempla Healthcare	5420
10.	EchoStar Communications	4500
11.	Kaiser Permanente	4141
12.	Xcel Energy (Utilities)	3712
13.	Ball Corp (Utilities)	3200
14.	Great West Life and Annuity Insurance Co.	3035
15.	University of Colorado Hospital	2985
16.	Avaya (Telecom)	2905
17.	CH2M Hill Companies Ltd. (Engineering)	2725
19.	The Children’s Hospital	2042
18,	Storage Technology Corp (Computer hardware)	2300
20.	University of Denver	2016

Portland: From movingtoportland.net

• Intel Corporation - 16,500

• Providence Health Systems - 13,500

• Safeway - 13,000

• Oregon Health & Science University - 11,300

• Fred Meyer Stores (Grocery) - 10,500

• Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Northwest - 8,747

• Legacy Health Systems - 8,500

• State of Oregon - 6,700

• Nike - 5,500

• City of Portland - 5,498

• Portland Public School, - 5,047

• Wells Fargo - 5,000

• U.S. Bank - 4,138

• Portland State University - 4,000

• United Parcel Service (UPS) - 3,900

• Beaverton School District, 3,886

• Portland Community College - 3,400

• Vancouver School District - 3,228

• Southwest Washington Medical Center - 3,200

• McDonald's Corporation - 3,000

Raleigh: From Raleigh4u.com

MAJOR EMPLOYERS IN RALEIGH:

10,000+ Employees:

State of North Carolina
Wake County Public School System

2,500+ Employees:

North Carolina State University
WakeMed Health & Hospitals
Rex Healthcare
Progress Energy
Wake County Government
City of Raleigh

MAJOR EMPLOYERS IN THE RESEARCH TRIANGLE REGION:

10,000+ Employees:

Duke University & Medical Center
University of North Carolina
IBM

2,500+ Employees:

GlaxoSmithKline
SAS Institute
Durham Public Schools
Blue Cross & Blue Shield of North Carolina
Cisco Systems
Verizon
Nortel
RTI International
PPD
Teleflex Medical
Research Triangle Institute
Career Partners
City of Durham

Charleston's City Market.  Also more fun than a normal grocery.

Cleveland: From The Plain Dealer 2007 (Companies only, not sure about government or schools)

1. Cleveland Clinic Foundation 27,755

2. University Hospitals Health Systems Inc. 16,611

3. Progressive Corp. (Insurance) 9,017

4. KeyCorp (Bank) 6,397

5. National City Corp. (Bank) 6,051

6. Case Western Reserve University 5,075

7. Ford Motor Co. 4,910

8. Sherwin-Williams 3,176

9. Continental Airlines 2,892

10. Giant Eagle (Grocery) 2,857

Des Moines: From mba-today.com

Principal Life Insurance Company	7900
Iowa Health Systems	4750
Mercy Hospital Medical Center	4500
Hy-Vee Food Stores	4475
United Parcel Service	1800
Nationwide Insurance (Allied)	1675
Dahl's Supermarkets	1650
Bridgestone/Firestone	1600
Qwest Corporation	1580
Communication Data Services, Inc.	1500
Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc. (Agribusiness)	1450
Electronic Data Systems, Corp.	1400
Wellmark, Inc. (Blue Cross)	1400
Seabury & Smith (now Marsh) (insurance)	1325
Wells Fargo Home Mortgage	1320
Meredith Corporation	990
Deere & Company	970
Des Moines Register	850

Asheville: From wikipedia.org

1	Mission Health System	3,000+
2	Buncombe County Schools System	3,000+
3	Ingles (grocery)	3,000+
4	State of North Carolina	1,000+
5	Buncombe County	1,000+
6	Asheville VA Medical Center	1,000+
7	City of Asheville	1,000+
8	Wal-Mart	1,000+
9	The Biltmore Company	1,000+
10	Asheville–Buncombe Technical Community College	1,000+
11	Eaton	1,000+
12	Grove Park Inn	500-999
13	Asheville City Schools	500-999
14	Community CarePartners	500-999
15	United States Postal Service	500-999
16	BorgWarner Turbo Systems	500-999
17	Thermo Fisher Scientific	500-999
18	arvato digital services	500-999
19	Employment Control (employment agency?)	500-999
20	Volvo Construction Equipment	500-999