The Wilkinson Firm · Open Data

Southeast Workforce Data

Employment, wages, unemployment and hiring difficulty for eight health, human services and hospitality occupations across 24 metropolitan areas. Built from federal labor data. Free to download, free to cite, no email required.

Download CSVDownload JSONHow the index works
Version 2026.07 · released 2026-07-27 · 192 metro-occupation records · licensed CC BY 4.0
Employment and wages: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OES (May 2025). Unemployment: BLS LAUS, May 2026.

Every metro we cover

Sorted by how hard it is to hire in health and human services. The employment and wage columns show behavioral health counselors as the reference occupation. Open any metro for the full eight-occupation record. n/p means BLS does not publish that estimate for that metro, and we leave it blank rather than guess.

MetroBH counselorsMean wageUnemploymentTightnessBandData
Durham-Chapel Hill, NC680$65,9003.2%86Very tightJSON
Savannah, GA460$58,0602.7%83Very tightJSON
Chattanooga, TN600$58,5403.0%80Very tightJSON
Raleigh, NC1,400$65,0903.0%70Very tightJSON
Greenville, NC170$60,1703.9%68TightJSON
Birmingham, ALn/p$59,4903.2%67TightJSON
Charleston, SC890$56,9403.2%64TightJSON
Knoxville, TN1,060$53,0002.7%64TightJSON
Winston-Salem, NC380$55,0003.6%61TightJSON
Nashville, TN3,440$56,3402.7%55TightJSON
Greensboro-High Point, NC480$56,8803.8%51CompetitiveJSON
Jacksonville, FL2,030$65,3304.7%50CompetitiveJSON
Richmond, VA4,150$62,4603.5%45CompetitiveJSON
Atlanta, GA5,880$64,2803.2%43CompetitiveJSON
Greenville-Anderson, SC1,070$60,2603.6%43CompetitiveJSON
Columbia, SC1,260$60,4303.8%40CompetitiveJSON
Charlotte, NC3,380$59,0003.6%39Deep poolJSON
Orlando, FL3,270$61,4104.4%37Deep poolJSON
Virginia Beach-Norfolk, VA3,760$62,9203.7%33Deep poolJSON
Miami-Fort Lauderdale, FL10,240$60,2903.6%32Deep poolJSON
New Orleans, LA1,580$47,1504.5%32Deep poolJSON
Memphis, TN1,560$53,1904.1%31Deep poolJSON
Tampa, FL4,370$62,5904.5%27Deep poolJSON
Chicago, IL15,580$70,1804.9%20Deep poolJSON

What the Talent Tightness Index measures

TWF Talent Tightness Index (0-100, higher = tighter for employers): 50% relative talent pool depth (inverted percentile of division-relevant occupation employment), 30% labor market slack (inverted percentile of metro unemployment rate, LAUS), 20% wage competition (percentile of division mean wage vs Southeast metros). Sources: BLS OES May 2025, BLS LAUS current month.

Bands. 70-100 Very tight; 55-69 Tight; 40-54 Competitive; 0-39 Deep pool

Computed 2026-07-26. The formula is published in full, because a framework you have to hide is a framework that cannot survive inspection.

How to cite this

The Wilkinson Firm, TWF Southeast Workforce Dataset, version 2026.07, 2026-07-27. https://hr.thewilkinsonfirm.com/data

Use it in a report, a grant application, a board deck, or a story. Attribution is the only condition. If you need a cut of the data we have not published, call 770-873-9004 and ask.

What is in the file

Eight occupations per metro: behavioral health counselors, child and family social workers, social and human service assistants, home health and personal care aides, plus waiters and waitresses, bartenders, hosts, and maids and housekeeping cleaners.

Each record carries employment, mean annual wage, the metro unemployment rate, and two tightness scores, one for health and human services and one for hospitality. Per-metro files live at /data/metros/<metro>.json.

One known gap: BLS does not publish a behavioral health counselor employment estimate for Birmingham. That cell is blank in the data rather than imputed.