Author: Simona Balazs, Blueprint Kentucky Research Director

Definitions:

Retail Employment: This graph highlights the Top 5 Retail Subsectors based on employment. Data for this graph are based on 2019 estimates from Woods & Poole Economics and include Eating and Drinking places.

Retail Pull Factors (PF): This graph represents the Top 5 Retail Subsectors based on the Pull Factors. Similar with the chart on retail employment, these estimates are based on 2019 data from Woods & Poole and include Eating and Drinking places. 

The Pull Factor (PF) is an indicator measuring an areas’ capacity to attract retail shoppers. It is calculated by dividing the Trade Area Capture (TAC) to the local population¹. TAC is the ratio of total retail sales to the average amount of money that a retail shopper spends— adjusting for income differences—and thus estimates the number of shoppers for that area. The Pull Factors were calculated for each retail subsector. If a PF is greater than one, then the local area is attracting retail customers from outside its boundaries, and/or local residents are spending more on retail than the average state resident. Conversely, if a Pull Factor is less than one then the reverse is true; the local area is losing retail shoppers to outside business, the residents are spending less than the state average, or both.

Retail Industry Characteristics: The table on retail industry characteristics provides data for the county and the state. Most data are based on 2019 estimates from Woods & Poole and include Drinking and Eating places, except for the Number of Retail Establishments and Retail Establishments per 1,000 people. These two measures are estimated based on 2019 data from Chmura/JobsEQ.

Retail Employment and Earnings by Age Group: Data in this table come from Quarterly Workforce Indicators compiled and published by the U.S. Census, which takes a quarterly snapshot of employment across various sectors and demographic distributions. Census defines employment as the sum of workers per business who were employed at the beginning of a quarter and received wages in the previous quarter. Thus, employment is defined by the receipt of wages, so it can be full-time, part-time, long-term, or temporary. Average annual earnings are based on the Census’s average quarterly earnings, which are only estimated for full-quarter employees. Thus, reported average earnings may include part-time wages, but not those who were hired or separated in that quarter. This measure provides some indication of the quality of retail jobs and how this might differ across age groups. The Census data were broken down into three age groups within the county: those 24 and under, those 55 and older, and those in between.

Percent Retail Jobs and Sales of Total: This graph showcases the retail share for jobs and sales over a time period of 5 years. In other words, of all the jobs held or sales generated in the county, what percentage is attributable to the retail sector? This measure is meant to highlight the relative importance of the retail sector to your county’s economy and how that has changed over time. These data are provided by Woods & Poole Economics and are reported at county level for 2019.

Map Indicators: The map allows the user to examine all counties in Kentucky on four measures: number of retail establishments, pull factor for the retail industry, retail employment and retail share of county employment.

1 Hustedde, Shaffer, and Pulver. “Community Economic Analysis: A How To Manual.” (1993). Retrieved from: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED264056

Data Sources: 

1. Chmura/JobsEQ 2019, http://www.chmuraecon.com/jobseq/ 
2. U.S. Census/QWI, 2018, https://qwiexplorer.ces.census.gov/static/explore.html#x=0&g=0
3. Woods & Poole Economics, 2019 estimates, https://www.woodsandpoole.com/