Glossary G-N

The following terms are commonly used in connection with employment and labor market information. To find the definition of a particular term from the list below, select the first letter of the term.

# A B C D E F G H IJ L M N O P QR S T U W (No K,V,X,Y or Z)

G
Geographic Information Systems (GIS): GIS is a computer system capable of assembling, storing, manipulating, and displaying geographically referenced information in the form of a map, i.e. data identified according to their locations.
High Demand Occupations: The top occupations in the state or the region for instance, occupations with the most openings, and/or occupations that have potential for highest growth.
High Skill Occupations: Occupations requiring long term on the job training (12 months) or more.
High Wage Occupations: Pay the median wage or above for the state or for a region.
Household: People living in a single residence regardless of relationship.
Industry: A group of establishments that produce similar products or provide similar services. For example, all establishments that manufacture automobiles are in the same industry. A given industry, or even a particular establishment in that industry, might have employees in dozens of occupations. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is used to categorize industries.
Industry Cluster: A subset of industries in the regional economy connected by flows of goods and services stronger than those linking them to the rest of the economy. Individual firms in a cluster benefit from certain comparative advantages associated with geographical concentration such as access to a common pool of specialized labor, infrastructure, intellectual property, and lower transaction costs between firms.
Industry Employment: Full-time and part-time workers (including employees on paid vacation or paid sick leave) who work or receive compensation from establishments for any part of the pay period including the 12th of the month. Those workers involved in labor-management disputes are excluded. This is a count of the number of jobs, and is available by industry.
Infrastructure: The resources required for an activity. The underlying foundation or basic framework.
Internship: A structured program where an individual gains supervised practical experience in an occupation.
JobCentral - National Labor Exchange: The nation's online labor exchange. Businesses post job listings, create customized job orders, and search resumes. Job seekers post resumes and search for jobs that fit their career goals. (www.jobcentral.org/)
Job Leavers: Unemployed people who quit or otherwise terminated their employment voluntarily and immediately began looking for work.
Job Losers: Unemployed people who involuntarily lost their last job or who had completed a temporary job.
Journey Level: A fully qualified worker in a specific trade.
Labor Dispute: Any controversy concerning terms or conditions of employment, or concerning the association or representation of people in negotiating, fixing, maintaining, changing, or seeking to arrange terms or conditions of employment, regardless of whether or not the disputants stand in the proximate relation of employer and employee.
Labor Force: This is a generic term that describes the collection of data that includes labor force (civilian or total), employment, unemployment, and the unemployment rate. In some of the tables or publications that come from Labor Market Information, the term "labor force" also means "civilian labor force".
Labor Market Area (LMA): An economically integrated geographic area within which individuals can reside and find employment within a reasonable distance or can readily change employment without changing their place of residence.
Labor Market Information (LMI): Information about the market -where labor skills are exchanged for wages. Information can be descriptive (qualitative) or statistical (quantitative). The key elements in the labor market are the workers (labor resources) and jobs (employment opportunities).
Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS): A Federal/State cooperative program which produces employment, labor force and unemployment estimates for States and local areas. (www.bls.gov/lau/)
Local Workforce Investment Area (LWIA): LWIA's administer services as designated by the Governor. Factors that are considered in designating these LWIA's include geographic location, population, and commonality of labor market areas.
Long Term Unemployment: Individuals who have been unemployed for 15 or more consecutive weeks.
Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) Program: This is a Federal-State cooperative effort to identify, describe, and track the effects of major jobs cutbacks using each State's unemployment insurance database. The program has reports on mass layoff actions that result in workers being separated from their jobs. (www.bls.gov/mls/)
Mean: The average value of a set of numbers.
Median: The mid-point in a data set after the numbers are sorted. The median is the point where half of the numbers lie above and half lie below this value.
Metropolitan Area (MA): A geographic area made up of a county containing a central city of 50,000 inhabitants or more, plus adjoining counties that are socially and economically integrated with the central city. There are three types of metropolitan areas: Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA); Primary Metropolitan Statistical Area (PMSA); Consolidated Metropolitan Statistical Area (CMSA).
Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA): A MSA is a relatively freestanding metropolitan area (MA) typically surrounded by non-metropolitan counties.
Mode: The number in a distribution of numbers that appears most frequently.
Net Replacements: See Replacements
New Entrants: Individuals entering the labor force for the first time.
Non-Durable Goods: Manufactured items that generally last three years or less. Food, beverages, clothing, shoes, and gasoline are common examples.
Noninstitutional: Individuals not residing in penal or mental institutions, sanitariums, and homes for the aged, infirm, and needy.
North American Industry Classification System (NAICS): NAICS is the successor to the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) System. The United States, Mexico, and Canada will universally use this system of classifying business establishments. Due to differences in NAICS and SIC structures, industry data for 2001 are not comparable to the SIC-based data for earlier years. NAICS focuses on how products and services are created, as opposed to the SIC focus on what is produced. (www.bls.gov/bls/naics.htm)
Not in the Labor Force: All people in the civilian noninstitutional population who are neither employed nor counted as unemployed are "not in the labor force."

# A B C D E F G H IJ L M N O P QR S T U W (No K,V,X,Y or Z)