For the past few months we have been exploring some of the best post-recession occupations in various states (see here, here and here), and one occupation keeps cropping up: network systems & data communications analysts. Since 2002, network systems & data communications analysts has shot up by an impressive 64%, which amounts to more than 98,000 new jobs. Below is a chart showing the rapid national growth.

In 2011, both The Washington Post and Career Explorer discussed this in-demand occupation. The Washington Post announced that network systems & data communications analysts was expected to be the second fastest growing occupation by 2018, adding 155,800 new jobs. Career Explorer marked it as the #1 hottest career for 2011, explaining that “the rapid spread of computers and technology has demanded an increase in highly skilled workers to develop and maintain systems for new technologies.”

To compliment this analysis we’d like to take a closer look at this expanding career. Using Analyst, EMSI’s web-based labor market analysis tool, we’ll examine more details of the occupation’s growth, regional breakdown, educational programs, and staffing patterns from 2002 to 2012.

Our study is based solely on labor market data from EMSI’s 2012.1 Covered Employment release, which is drawn from 80+ state and federal data sources. Please note that the preliminary 2012 data is still a projection.

OCCUPATION FACTS

According to the BLS, Network Systems & Data Communications Analysts (SOC 15-1081) analyze, design, test, and evaluate network systems, such as local area networks (LAN), wide area networks (WAN), Internet, intranet, and other data communications systems. They also, perform network modeling, analysis, and planning and conduct research and recommend network and data communications hardware and software. This occupation also includes telecommunications specialists who deal with the interfacing of computer and communications equipment. The workers may also supervise computer programmers. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Here are some alternative job titles:

• Internet Developer
• Systems Integrator
• Webmaster

Here are a few more data facts we collected from Analyst. The median hourly earnings for network systems analysts is about $35 per hour. In 2010, 60,874 completed degrees that could relate to this occupation. Keep in mind, these folks likely pursued other similar occupations, so not all 61,000 went after this job alone. Indeed.com tells us that there are nearly 7,000 current job postings. A surprising majority (70%) of the employees are ages 25-44, which means the workforce is quite young.

Most of the people who work in this field have a Bachelor’s degree or some college and no degree.

REGIONAL BREAKDOWN

Now let’s look at how these occupations are distributed across the states.

• No big surprise – California currently has the most jobs (nearly 30,000 in 2012), followed by New York (22,000), Florida (18,000), and Texas (17,000).

• States with the highest proportionate growth since 2002 are North Dakota, 138% (163 new jobs), Utah, 125% (760 new jobs), Vermont, 119% (233 new jobs), and New Mexico, 118% (393 new jobs).

• The most notable overall growth belongs to Virginia (8,357 new jobs, 108%), D.C. (1,377 new jobs, 98%), Texas (7,628 new jobs, 78%), California (11,044  new jobs, 59%), New York (7,724 new jobs, 55%), and Florida (6,168 new jobs, 54%).

• The highest level of jobs per capita (measured in terms of location quotient, or LQ) are in Virginia (1.85 LQ), Washington State (1.81), Washington D.C. (1.79), Maryland (1.77), New York (1.44), and Florida (1.34).

• The states with the best pay might surprise you. At an average of $42 per hour, New Jersey is the highest. Next comes Delaware, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington State, all which pay an average wage right around $40 an hour.

EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS

The top educational programs are:

• Computer & information sciences, general (22,514 completions in 2010),
• Computer systems networking & telecommunications (16,370 completions), and
• Information technology (12,172 completions).

STAFFING PATTERNS

The staffing patterns (below) display the top industries that employ network systems and data communications analysts.

• Computer systems design services  – 9.4% of the total industry employment
• Custom computer programming services – 8.8% of the total industry employment
• Corporate, subsidiary, and regional managing offices – 6.3% of the total industry employment

CONCLUSION

Despite hard economic times, this occupation seems to be doing quite well. The pay is good, jobs are spread around nation, and growth is pretty stellar. Give it a look if you like the sound of it.

Find out more about EMSI here. You can reach us via Twitter @DesktopEcon or by emailing Rob Sentz (rob@economicmodeling.com).

5:17 pm on May 18th, 2012
Categories: Careers, Data & Analysis, Featured, Front Page, Occupations.
Tags: data communication analysts, network systems.

Citation

Consuelo C. Romero, Gerrit Hoogenboom, Guillermo A. Baigorria, Jawoo Koo, Arjan J. Gijsman, Stanley Wood. Reanalysis of a global soil database for crop and environmental modeling. Environmental Modelling & Software, Volume 35, July 2012, Pages 163-170. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364815212000667

Abstract

There is an increased need for detailed soil information that can be used for applications of crop and environmental modeling. The goal of this project was to conduct a reanalysis of the ISRIC-WISE 1.1 Soil Profile Dataset. As part of the procedures, the soil reanalysis database was fitted to the standard formats of the International Consortium for Agricultural Systems Application (ICASA). Thus, the soil reanalysis database tailors dynamic crop models such as the Cropping System Model (CSM) of the Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT). During the reanalysis, the physical and chemical parameters of the soil profiles were revised and estimated, where necessary and possible, using pre-established ranges given by the literature and correlations among other more stable variable. To evaluate each of the 3404 reanalyzed soil profiles, the CSM-CERES-Maize model was run for a standard crop management scenario using both the original and the new improved soil databases. Nine hundred seventy-eight soil profiles were considered to be not useful during the reanalysis due to missing values for one or more critical variables and were, therefore, not considered for quality control procedures. A pre-diagnostic for only nitrogen and soil organic carbon in the original dataset showed 70% and 5% of missing values respectively. A sensitivity analysis based on crop simulations comparing the original and the reanalyzed soil databases, showed that 1294 soil profiles yielded different results due to improvement of either the original data or improved conversion procedures. The details and considerations for detecting missing and erroneous values and for estimating soil variable values are presented in this paper for further use. The final soil reanalysis global database contains 3404 soil profiles and is available at https://harvestchoice.wufoo.com/forms/download-wisol.