Creative Class County Codes

The creative class thesis—that towns need to attract engineers, architects, artists, and people in other creative occupations to compete in today's economy—may be particularly relevant to rural communities, which tend to lose much of their talent when young adults leave. The ERS creative class codes indicate a county's share of population employed in occupations that require "thinking creatively." Variables used to construct the ERS creative class measure include number and percent employed in creative class occupations and a metro/nonmetro indicator for all counties, 1990, 2000, and 2007-11. A break-out of employment in the arts is included.

Data and Resources

Field Value
Groups
  • AmeriGEOSS
  • National Provider
  • North America
Tags
  • amerigeo
  • amerigeoss
  • ckan
  • geo
  • geoss
  • national
  • north-america
  • united-states
isopen True
license_id cc-by
license_title Creative Commons Attribution
license_url http://www.opendefinition.org/licenses/cc-by
maintainer Tim Wojan
maintainer_email twojan@ers.usda.gov
metadata_created 2025-11-30T03:48:08.193648
metadata_modified 2025-11-30T03:48:08.193652
notes The creative class thesis—that towns need to attract engineers, architects, artists, and people in other creative occupations to compete in today's economy—may be particularly relevant to rural communities, which tend to lose much of their talent when young adults leave. The ERS creative class codes indicate a county's share of population employed in occupations that require "thinking creatively." Variables used to construct the ERS creative class measure include number and percent employed in creative class occupations and a metro/nonmetro indicator for all counties, 1990, 2000, and 2007-11. A break-out of employment in the arts is included.
num_resources 1
num_tags 8
title Creative Class County Codes