Planet Money looked at Census Bureau data for every state to determine what the most common job was in every state. For this purpose, they excluded two "catch-all" categories--"managers not elsewhere classified" and "salespersons not elsewhere classified" to arrive at the answer.
Truck Drivers.
Here is a map showing the most common job in every state.
In 29 states truck driver is the most common job. Nothing is even close to it.
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| The Most Common Job in Each State 2014 |
Primary school teachers are the most common job in six states.
Secretaries are the most common in five states and software developers the most common in four states.
Why are there so many truck drivers? Planet Money explains.
What's with all the truck drivers? Truck drivers dominate the map for a few reasons.
- Driving a truck has been immune to two of the biggest trends affecting U.S. jobs: globalization and automation. A worker in China can't drive a truck in Ohio, and machines can't drive cars (yet).
- Regional specialization has declined. So jobs that are needed everywhere — like truck drivers and schoolteachers — have moved up the list of most-common jobs.
- The prominence of truck drivers is partly due to the way the government categorizes jobs. It lumps together all truck drivers and delivery people, creating a very large category. Other jobs are split more finely; for example, primary school teachers and secondary school teachers are in separate categories.
Political pundits like to refer to the middle of the country as "flyover" country. Looking at the most common jobs in those states today it would seem a more apt description would be trucking country.
A few interesting observations of my own from the data.
- The most common job in the District of Columbia? LAWYER.
- I am an attorney but this ought to tell you something about what is going in Washington, D.C. when we hear calls to drain the swamp.
- What is more interesting is that in 1996 the most common job in D.C. was JANITOR. I kid you not.
- Primary School Teacher is the most common job in Florida despite having the highest percentage of its population age 65+. 18.7% are senior citizens.
- In fact, only 15.1% of the population of Florida is between the ages of 5-17. That ranks 47th in the U.S. The national average is 17%. Utah has the highest percentage of school age students--22.2%. D.C has the lowest---10.9%
- Primary school teachers are also the most common job in four other states that have low percentages of school age children---Massachusetts (44th), Rhode Island (46th) and West Virginia (tied with Florida for 47th). What is going on with that?
- Alaska is the only state where primary school teacher is the most common job and has a relatively young school age population (ranks 5th).
- (all population and student data from NEA 2015 Ranking of the States)
- States in which that state is the only one to have this most common job.
- Hawaii--Cook
- Nevada--Retail Clerk
- Arizona--Customer Service
- New York--Nursing Aide
You get a sense of how the economy of the United States has changed by looking at this map of the most common jobs by state in 1978 and comparing it to the current map above.
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| The Most Common Job in Each State 1978 |
A break down of the most common jobs by state in 1978.
Secretary--21 states (now 5)
Machine Operators/Factory Workers--11 states (now 0)
Truck Driver-- 9 states (now 29)
Farmers--8 states (now 2)
You can go to this link to look at an interactive map of the most common job in each state for all years between 1978-2014.
The changes over the last 35 years have been pretty dynamic and have been largely driven by productivity advances (farming), technology (secretaries, software development), globalization (machine operators), economic demand (trucking) and a federal bureaucracy that is intent on legislating, regulating and stipulating almost every facet of American life (lawyers in DC).
Do we dare consider what these maps might look like in another 10 years? 35 years?
Will we still be able to keep on trucking?
By the way, Friday's headline on Trucks.com----
Autonomous Trucks and Commercial Vehicles Will Be in Service Faster Than Many Predict
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