Information Occupations and the Socioeconomic Environments in U.S. Metropolitan Areas

Abstract

Throughout this dissertation, I focus on information occupations, which deliver knowledge and information-intensive input to economic activities, and which are high-end jobs requiring a high level of education and skills. The main questions are fourfold: What are information occupations?; How can we define information occupations and their geographic profiles?; Why are information occupations important in metropolitan economies?; What metropolitan characteristics affect the specialization in information occupations? Regarding these questions, I suggest a new analytical framework to define ?information occupations? and explore their geographic profiles using two databases: Occupational Network Information (O*NET) and Occupational Employment Statistics (OES). Information Occupations are becoming important in regional studies in two aspects: the growing employment in information occupations in the new economies, compared to non-information occupations, and their importance to metropolitan economies. Information occupations prefer cultural environments with innovation capacity and high density of the younger workforce, rather than diversity. In terms of economic functions, metropolitan size is more closely related to urban hierarchies than to Internet infrastructure. Policy makers are able to enhance the competitiveness of medium sized metropolitan areas if they target regular information occupations for regional development. Industry specialization is still important to location choice of information occupations.