The jobs that barely exist outside one state
A location quotient says how concentrated an occupation is compared with the country as a whole. At the extremes it stops describing a labour market and starts describing a single city.
Published 2026-08-12 · BLS OEWS May 2025
Every wage page here carries a figure called the location quotient, and almost nobody knows what it is for. It is a ratio: the share of local jobs in an occupation, divided by that occupation’s share of jobs nationally. One means the state has exactly its expected number. Two means twice as many as you would expect.
Political Scientists in District of Columbia score 122.81. Not twice the national rate — 123 times it, across 3,070 jobs. There is no labour-market explanation for a number like that beyond the obvious one: the work is where the government is.
The most concentrated occupations in the country
| Occupation | State | LQ | Jobs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Political Scientists | District of Columbia | 122.81 | 3,070 |
| Economists | District of Columbia | 37.34 | 3,000 |
| Aircraft Structure, Surfaces, Rigging, and Systems Assemblers | Kansas | 30.86 | 9,710 |
| Personal Care and Service Workers, All Other | Oregon | 29.99 | 22,930 |
| Service Unit Operators, Oil and Gas | North Dakota | 25.16 | 3,000 |
| Public Relations Managers | District of Columbia | 21.92 | 7,410 |
| First-Line Supervisors of Gambling Services Workers | Nevada | 21.54 | 5,590 |
| Gambling Dealers | Nevada | 20.78 | 17,390 |
| Sailors and Marine Oilers | Louisiana | 19.23 | 7,580 |
| Biochemists and Biophysicists | Massachusetts | 18.81 | 14,890 |
| Semiconductor Processing Technicians | Oregon | 16.63 | 6,620 |
| Chemical Plant and System Operators | Louisiana | 16.43 | 3,400 |
Read down the list and each entry names an industry rather than a job: aircraft assembly in Wichita, casinos in Las Vegas, offshore oil in the Gulf, biotech around Boston, federal policy work in Washington. A high location quotient is what a single-industry regional economy looks like in wage statistics.
Why the floor matters
This table only counts occupations with at least 3,000 jobs in the state, and the cut is doing real work. A location quotient divides by a national share, so a tiny occupation produces enormous ratios from very few people: pile driver operators in Alaska score above 40 on fewer than two hundred jobs.
That is arithmetic, not economics. Without a floor the list fills with occupations too small to say anything about, and the genuinely striking cases get buried under them.
What a location quotient is not
It says nothing about pay. An occupation can be highly concentrated and badly paid, and several on this list are. It says nothing about growth: a quotient is a snapshot, and a declining single-industry region can hold a very high one for years on the way down.
It is also a state-level figure, which for a large state hides more than it shows. Aircraft assembly is not spread across Kansas; it is in and around one city. The state is simply the level at which the survey publishes.
Reading it on a page
On any occupation and area page here, a location quotient near 1 means the job is about as common there as anywhere. Below 1, less common. Well above, and you are looking at a place that specialises — which usually means more employers competing for the same people, and sometimes, though not reliably, better pay.
The figure ships in the API and on every page. The companion piece on cost of living covers the other half of the geography question: not where the job is, but where the pay goes furthest.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. Public domain under 17 U.S.C. §105. Not affiliated with or endorsed by BLS. Full methodology.