The R package “lehdr” created by Professor Jamaal Green at Penn (and others) was updated on 5/14/2023 to include year 2020 data from the Census Bureau. Yay!!

This is a great way to acquire (free) data on workers-at-block (block group, tract, county, state) of residence and of workplace. The user can then link the data with census GIS files using the  R program “tigris” and map and display all sorts of data.

The LEHD/LODES data also has origin-destination “flows” (block-to-block, block group-to-block group, tract-to-tract, county-to-county, state-to-state).

My r script using lehdr and tigris for California is free to share, here:

https://github.com/chuckpurvis/r_scripts/blob/main/lehdr_California_2020.R

My r script for using tidycensus to map population density (Census 2020, PL 94-171) for the Bay Area and San Francisco City is here:

https://github.com/chuckpurvis/r_scripts/blob/main/PL94171_Calif_PopDensity_2020.R

The “lehdr” ( pronounced “lee-ter”) package is used to download and format data from the Census Bureau’s LEHD / LODES program.

##  LED   = Local Employment Dynamics
##  LEHD  = Longitudinal Employer Household Dynamics Program
##  LODES = LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics
##  UI    = Unemployment Insurance
##  QCEW  = Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages
##  RAC   = Residence Area Characteristics
##  WAC   = Workplace Area Characteristics
##  CES   = Center for Economic Studies, US Bureau of the Census

Documentation on LEHD/LODES is available from the Census Bureau here:

https://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/#lodes

https://lehd.ces.census.gov/data/lodes/LODES8/LODESTechDoc8.0.pdf

Also of interest to MPOs and State DOTs will be the NCHRP report published 12 years ago (September 2011):

https://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/docs/NCHRP08-36(98)_FR.pdf

“Improving Employment Data for Transportation Planning”



Hope this is of interest!

Chuck Purvis
Hayward, California
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