I am mapping the locations of current minimum wage jobs in Minnesota based on Indeed job postings. On Indeed, you are able to set Salary ranges for the jobs that you want to appear when you run a search. What I have been doing is I have been telling indeed to send me job postings where the annual salary range is below $20,000 per year, (Minimum wage for MN is currently $19,760 yearly, but $20,000 gives some wiggle room). What is also cool about Indeed is it lets you set the geographic location that you want to pull jobs from. In the case of the current project, I have been pulling based on the counties in Minnesota.
Where the problem comes in, and where I need help, is that to do this, I have to go through every job posting that shows up in the indeed search manually to make sure that I get all of the information I am trying to track. The information I am tracking is: The company that posted the job, the physical location name of the job (If it is in a mall, if it is at a location different from the company name, etc), the title of the position, the job id/requisition number (How I track if it is actually a unique job if multiples have the same title), whether or not it is full or part time, the number of openings for the posting, the date of the posting, the address of the posting, the city of the posting, the zip code of the posting, and if the posting states it, the wage.
Currently, I have only been able to track the jobs that have been popping up in the 7 county metro. Hennepin especially has been a powerhouse for low wage jobs. The companies there create at least 250 every 2-3 days. This leaves 80 counties that I can't track personally. Ideally, I would love to be able to track the jobs in St Louis County (Duluth, Hibbing), Beltrami County (Bemidji), Olmsted County (Rochester), Stearns County (Saint Cloud), Clay County (Moorhead), Blue Earth County (Mankato), Winona County (WInona), Steele County (Owatonna), Mower County (Austin), Sherburne County (Elk River, Big Lake), Rice County (Faribault, and Northfield), Kandiyohi County (Willmar), Freeborn County (Albert Lea), Wright County (Saint Michael, Otsego, Buffalo), Benton County (Sartell, Sauk Rapids), Goodhue County (Red Wing), Mcleod County (Hutchinson), Lyon County (Marshall), Nicollet County (North Mankato, Saint Peter), Douglas County (Alexandria), Otter Tail County (Fergus Falls), Crow WIng County (Brainerd), Brown County (New Ulm), Nobles County (Worthington), Carlton County (Cloquet), Itasca County (Grand Rapids), Chisago County (North Branch), and Martin County (Fairmont). Essentially, the counties with cities over 10,000 if I have to prioritize.
What my overall goal with this project is is to give a geographic context to the raising the minimum wage debate. I want to find out what areas of the state are creating the most of these jobs, and thus see what parts of the state would be most affected if the wage were to be raised to $15 hourly. This will also give insight into what types of jobs people currently work for minimum wage. I can see some other interesting maps coming out of this if you combined the locations of these jobs with census date considering unemployment and poverty
Let me know if this is something that anyone else would be interested in working on