ACS Data Users Group

In the 2022 LODES data and 2021 LODES data, the number of jobs in NAICS sector 61 (Educational Services) CNS15 variable has the value of 16,851 in the California Census Block with the GEOID 060750301012006. It had a value of zero in the previous year - overall this Census Block had a significantly lower number of jobs across all sectors in 2020, 2019 and 2018 LODES data relative to the new LODES 2021 and 2022 numbers. Is this steep of a spike in the number of jobs expected in this Census Block starting with 2021 LODES data? In other words, is there an issue with the data, or are the numbers here reflecting a real influx of jobs across all NAICS sectors in this specific area? I used California data from the LODES8 version for all comparisons. I wasn't able to find any alternative sources noting this change.

In the past when I worked with LEHD LODES I found that there are blocks showing a lot of employment because it is the location of a company's headquarters and although the employment should be sprinkled around the county or larger area. Looking at that block on the map it seems like that is too much employment for the space and I wonder if this could be the issue. It looks like there is a Univ hospital and maybe something changed between datasets that reassigned all the employment to this block when it was better distributed in the past versions.

Thank you so much for this insight! It does seem less likely to be an accurate reflection of the number of jobs in these NAICS sectors given how big of a jump it is within a single block in only one year, unless there are multiple different businesses that happen to default to this specific location for some reason. Maybe not exactly erroneous, but it could be that the approximated assignment of these jobs happened to disproportionately affect this Block and avoid the surrounding areas.