The six maps that accompany this piece trace the geographic distribution of labour-market tightness across the major occupational categories. The patterns are sharper at the geographic level than the headline national statistics imply.

Map one: Healthcare

Healthcare worker shortages are concentrated in specific regions: rural areas across most of the country, several mid-sized metros in the Mountain West and upper Midwest, and surprisingly, several densely-populated coastal metros where wage levels have failed to keep pace with cost-of-living adjustments.

Map two: Trades

Trades shortages follow a different geography. The strongest shortages are in the metros where construction activity has been most concentrated; the Sun Belt and Mountain West dominate the map.

Map three: Tech

The tech labour market shows the sharpest divergence between specialist categories with persistent tightness and broader categories where slack has emerged over the past two years. The map captures both patterns.

Map four: Transportation

Transportation-worker availability has improved across most of the country over the past two years, but specific regional shortages remain in defined corridors that the map identifies.

Map five: Education

Education-worker availability shows the most uneven pattern across the maps. Strong shortages in specific subject areas and specific geographies coexist with broader adequacy in other categories and regions.

Map six: Aggregate

The aggregate map combines the categorical data into a single composite labour-market-tightness index by metro. The metros that emerge as most strained are not, in many cases, the metros that the broader conversation has been emphasising.

What the maps together show

What the maps together show is that the national labour-market story is the average of geographic patterns that are more divergent than the national framing implies. Policy calibrated to the national average will miss what is actually happening at the geographic and occupational level.