THE UNITED SKILLS OF AMERICA

AN INFOGRAPHIC BY SMARTERER

SUMMARY

In today’s economy, finding meaningful employment can be a challenge.

But have you ever considered that certain skills might just be easier to find in certain places? Maybe Californians are better at

graphic design than Connecticut residents.

Maybe those designers could get a job more easily if they moved.

We thought we’d find out.

METHODOLOGY

We looked at about twenty of our most popular professional tests, from AP Style to Python and from investment banking to Illustrator. We split the US into five geographical regions: the Northeast, the Midwest, the South, the Rockies and Plains, and the West Coast.

By comparing the average score in each skill both nationally and regionally, we could see which skills each region was better at than everyone else.

Then we found the two worst skills in each region. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has unemployment data by position, and we used that to find jobs matching the skills each region lacked.

We compared the regional unemployment rate for that position to the regional unemployment rate overall, and finally to the national rate.

WHAT WE FOUND• Developer skills — such

as PHP, Javascript and C++ — were much better in the West than the East.

• But financial skills on the West Coast were weak – the unemployment rate for Financial Analysts is a dramatic 3.1 percentage points lower than the regional rate.

WHAT WE FOUND

• In the Midwest, users scored a full 19.8% lower in Javascript than users in the Rockies. So if you’re a Javascript programmer without a job, consider making Colorado or New Mexico your new home!

• The South scored 16% better than the rest of the country in Investment Banking, but the Northeast came out first in Excel and Basic Math.

See the full version here: http://smarterer.com/blog/2012/09/06/the-united-skills-of-america-infographic/