Percentage of Tourism Related Jobs:

Description of Patterns:

The economic map of New York State that I have decided to create is an interactive choropleth map that portrays the percentage of jobs within each county that are related to tourism. The map outlines each of the 62 counties within New York State, while it also portrays the percentage of jobs devoted to tourism within each of these 62 counties by shading the counties in a green color gradient scheme. The gradient color scheme displays the counties with higher percentages of jobs connected to tourism with darker shades of green, while displaying counties with lower percentages of tourism related jobs with a lighter shade of green. After describing how the data is depicted on my map some patterns can be seen. The first pattern that struck out to me would be the fact that the counties of Hamilton, Essex, and Warren all have relatively high percentages of tourism related jobs. This is a pattern due to the fact that each of these counties border each other and are located within the Adirondack State Park. Another pattern that I was able to find can be seen in the lower percentage of jobs related to tourism

within the counties of Albany, New York, Erie and Monroe. This can be seen as a pattern due to the fact that each of counties are relatively urbanized and contain larger cities such as New York, Albany, Buffalo, and Rochester. Another pattern that can be found after clicking on each county and reading the average wage of tourist jobs is that each county with higher percentages of tourist jobs have very similar average wages.

Analysis of Patterns:

Looking at these patterns that I have described some conclusions can possibly be made. The first possible conclusion can be connected to the relatively higher percentages of tourism related jobs of the 3 described counties that are located within the Adirondack State Park. These patterns can possibly be explained by the local economies of these counties. Counties located within the Adirondack State Park are primarily rural, with few urbanized communities and cities. With these counties being primarily rural and not heavily urbanized, they have not attracted larger businesses and industry into their economies. Do to these rural counties not containing larger businesses and industry; their economies have possibly become largely dependent upon tourism as a means for jobs and financial support, making these tourism jobs count for a higher percentage of the jobs within the counties. The second conclusion can be connected to the patterns of relatively lower percentages of tourism related jobs within the more urbanized state counties described above. These patterns can also possibly be explained by the local economies of these counties. Due to the fact that these counties are heavily urbanized, they have been successfully able to attract large amounts of businesses to settle within their cities. These businesses and corporations have then been able to contribute and strongly support the local

economies of these urbanized counties. These businesses have also created thousands of jobs for these counties that constitute a large percentage of the total jobs within these counties; which can possibly explain why these urbanized counties have a relatively lower percentage of tourism related jobs when compared to counties that are not as heavily urbanized.

Publication information of data sources:

The source for my New York State Travel and Tourism 2007-2010 data was created by the New York State Department of Labor in 2010. The data was available at www.labor.ny.gov/stats/index.shtm, and accessed on March 30th.

The source for my New York State Counties data was created and made available by Google. The date of publication is unavailable. Accessed on March 30th.