A labor market area is a geographic area or region defined for purposes of compiling, reporting, and evaluating employment,

unemployment Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the refere ...

workforce The workforce or labour force is a concept referring to the pool of human beings either in employment or in unemployment. It is generally used to describe those working for a single company or industry, but can also apply to a geographic reg ...

availability, and related topics. It can be defined as an economically integrated region within which residents can find jobs within a reasonable commuting distance or can change their employment without changing their place of residence.

Commuting Commuting is periodically recurring travel between one's place of residence and place of work or study, where the traveler, referred to as a commuter, leaves the boundary of their home community. By extension, it can sometimes be any regul ...

flows are a primary consideration in defining and delineating labor market areas. The extent to which workers are willing and able to commute between two places indicates the degree of economic integration between those places.

United States

In the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) maintains standard definitions of labor market areas for the purpose of standardization and to promote comparability of the labor force information used by various government programs. Definitions are updated annually, and the entire system of definitions is reevaluated once each decade based on decennial census data. BLS uses metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas, including metropolitan divisions, as its principal basis for defining labor market areas. In

New England New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the Can ...

, labor market area definitions are based on

New England city and town area A New England city and town area (NECTA) is a geographic and statistical entity defined by the U.S. federal government for use in the six-state New England region of the United States. NECTAs are analogous to metropolitan statistical areas and micr ...

s rather than the

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

-based statistical areas used in other parts of the country. For geographic areas outside of metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas, the BLS identifies labor market areas based primarily on commuting data, with a requirement that all components of a labor market area be contiguous.

European Union

The method uses commuter flows between cities and municipalities as a characteristic. It thus enables uniform criteria, and is used in several European countries and by the Statistical Office of the European Union ( Eurostat). Since settlement and land use of an area change considerably over time, the boundaries of the labor market areas must be revised regularly to ensure that they adequately reflect the current situation.

Germany

In Germany, labor market areas are defined and updated by the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning. The division of Germany into labour market areas focuses on urban-suburban relations.

Switzerland

In 2018, the

Swiss Federal Statistical Office The Federal Statistical Office (FSO) is a Federal agency of the Swiss Confederation. It is the statistics office of Switzerland, situated in Neuchâtel and attached to the Federal Department of Home Affairs. The Federal Statistical Office ...

(FSO) defined the labor market areas in Switzerland, a total of 101 labor market areas, which are grouped into 16 major labor market regions. In parallel, a total of ten cross-border labor market regions were designated.FSO
Arbeitsmarktregionen 2018 - Erläuterungsbericht
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References

Economic geography Unemployment Workforce Metropolitan areas Urban geography {{labor-stub

United States

European Union

Germany

Switzerland

See also

References