Figure 1 (Click to enlarge). Geospatial Solutions subscribers are classified into business-code categories. The information the magazine collects indicates that government operations constitutes the largest reader segment.

What types of people compose the geospatial community? In which industry segments do such people work? What are their job classifications? What broad sweeping statements can we make regarding the geospatial labor force? In this month's Shop Talk column -- the second installment in a series -- we address these questions. Building on part one of this series, when we explored the geographic distribution of the geospatial community (see Thrall and Campins, "Mapping the Geospatial Community, Part One," Geospatial Solutions, www.geospatial-online.com/0704shoptalk), we delve further to investigate the demographics of spatial professionals.

With the geospatial market poised to grow to between $60 and $100 billion within the next decade (Corle 2004), such analysis has regional, national, and even global implications. Consider also that the Office of Management and Budget is working to place a value on the contribution of geospatial technologies to the U.S. economy, and the Department of Labor has identified spatial taechnologies as one of three high-growth job markets (Sietzen 2004).

Table 1 (Click to enlarge).

But which geographic regions will be the beneficiaries of geospatial market growth? How can support firms and related industries take advantage of this large market for geospatial technology? Can economic development officers, through a better understanding of the characteristics of the geospatial technology market, turn that understanding into an apparatus for local economic development? Can this information be used to guide regions within national or international locations to economic opportunities arising from geospatial technologies? Are universities being responsive to the needs of employers by graduating students with the right set of skills to take advantage of the high-growth geospatial job market?

Our analysis begins to provide answers to these and other questions based on the best available data about the spatial industry -- Geospatial Solutions' own database of readers. Geospatial Solutions has approximately 27,000 readers, and also maintains a list of GIS firms. Advanstar Communications, the parent company of Geospatial Solutions, gave us access to their proprietary databases, and -- in an unprecedented move in the geospatial technology market as well as in the publication industry -- the company agreed that the results of the analysis could be shared with the geospatial technology community through this series of columns.

Figure 2 (Click to enlarge). Breaking down subscribers according to organizational affiliation reveals that private business users exceed government users by almost 20 percent. Coupled with the data in Figure 1, this implies that many of those readers in private business are government consultants or contractors.

Vertical Markets Because Geospatial Solutions continually maintains and qualifies its readers into specific industry segments, executing the first part of our demographic analysis was fairly straightforward. In part one of this column series, we explained that Geospatial Solutions' subscription database is audited by an independent firm to ensure the accuracy of the information provided by subscribers to Advanstar. Subscribers complete and submit forms, which are included with each issue of Geospatial Solutions, to qualify for a free subscription. Prospective subscribers are asked to provide information about their job title, primary type of business, and organizational affiliation. Advanstar assigns and breaks down the subscriber responses into business codes, organizational affiliation codes, and title codes. Table 1 summarizes the various codes assigned to subscribers.

Because Advanstar provided us with the codes for each of Geospatial Solutions subscribers, we obtained a clearer picture of the spatial marketplace by classifying and analyzing subscribers according to these three sets of codes.

Table 2.

Business Codes. Figure 1, for example, summarizes subscribers' business-code responses, and we believe that the relative magnitude of the data is reflective of the geospatial industry as a whole.

Government operations is the leading business-code category, with 21.9 percent of subscribers declaring that to be their business code. This number, however, may be slightly skewed because it is possible that a geospatial technology employee for a public utility might have selected government operations and not utility as their business code. The business code categorization of subscribers is also interesting because Valerie L. Hartung (1997) had sampled 300 geospatial technology firms within the United States and 84 from Canada and concluded that the largest market for geospatial technology is in utilities and all levels of government. We are in agreement with Hartung's assessment that government operations are by far the largest geospatial technology employment segment based on our analysis of the Geospatial Solutions readership database.

Figure 3 (Click to enlarge). According to job title, 9,186 Geospatial Solutions subscribers hold a management title in the private sector. Of those, 45 percent, or nearly 17 percent of the magazine's readership, hold the position of owner, president, or CEO.

It is also notable that the business-code groups of surveying/mapping and business services compete for second place -- each commanding about 15 percent of Geospatial Solutions respondents. Some analysts may find it surprising that business services has a much greater representation among Geospatial Solutions subscribers than natural resources/environmental planning. This is significant because, apart from a few wayward academics (Thrall 2002), business geography has been noticeably absent from higher education, which has instead given great attention to spatial technologies for natural resources/environmental planning applications. Thus, our analysis reveals that a gap may exist between geospatial occupations and the types of education universities offer to address the needs of that industry segment.

Lastly, it is also interesting to note that only 2.75 percent of Geospatial Solutions subscribers selected healthcare for their business code, leaving that industry segment at the bottom of the categories. Healthcare, however, may be poised for a proportionately higher rate of growth than other business-code categories as the aging baby-boomer population demands more attention for public health issues (Thrall 1999).

Table 3.

Affiliation Codes. When Geospatial Solutions' readership responses, and by implication the geospatial industry, are broken down by organizational affiliation, the data prove even more revealing (see Figure 2 and Table 2). In this case, the more general organizational affiliation categories (government/public sector, private business, university/college) elucidate the more specific business-code classifications. For instance, private business exceeds government by nearly 20 percent. Because government was the leading business-code category, the data reveal that, by implication, many of those in private business are consultants or contractors with government. Furthermore, the dominance of the private-business category, again, points to a growing need for university geospatial programs to address business topics.

Figure 4 (Click to enlarge). This chart shows a breakdown for the 13 percent of all Geospatial Solutions' subscribers that declare their titles to be in the geospatial IT category.

Title Codes. Turning to an analysis of job titles, the data reveal that 38 percent of all Geospatial Solutions subscribers hold a management title in the private sector (see Figure 3 and Table 3). Of those, 45 percent hold the position of owner, president, or CEO. In other words, 17 percent of the readership holds the highest executive positions in private industry. Interest in keeping at the leading edge of geospatial technology and reasoning appears to be keen for senior business executives.

Another interesting statistic is that 13 percent of all Geospatial Solutions' subscribers declare their title to be in the geospatial information technology (IT) category, which includes manager of IT or information systems (IS), applications developer, senior manager, user support, IS or IT staff, and Internet/Web developer (see Figure 4 and Table 4). An ongoing debate exists as to whether GIS/geospatial technology is a subcomponent of IS or IT, or something different. Although these percentages are not insignificant, they do not make a compelling case that GIS/geospatial technology is a subcomponent of IS or IT. Rather, they suggest that geospatial reasoning, intelligence, and technology have a dependency on IS and IT, but geospatial technologies are, at the same time, much greater in breadth and scope.

Table 4.