Signs of the Housing Bubble, Available in 2005

You've heard all about housing price spikes and mortgage defaults, of course. It's 2007, and the housing market bubble is deflating rapidly. And if you've read a bit deeper, you know that the areas suffering the biggest declines are the recent housing hotspots such as Florida and California. Could we have seen this coming? Well, if we were looking, the data was available in 2005 to show just how overheated some markets were getting...

The two maps below show the top metro areas for jobs in two categories of bubble-related jobs, construction workers and drywall installers, relative to the underlying populations of the metro areas. It's a pretty striking pair of pictures, pointing directly at Florida and California.

Explore the results below, noting particularly:

• Click on a map marker to bring up a data balloon identifying the city, as well as some summary stats. The Relative Popularity number is compared to a national average for that job of 1.0.
• Clicking the Employment Profile link in the bubble brings you to a detailed page showing that metro area's employment picture in detail.
• You can also find the full employment picture related to construction and related workers, and drywall and ceiling tile installers, including salaries and demand, by metro area.
• Explore hundreds of individual job types in detail, including a map mashup for each, starting at the CityTownInfo career and employment directory.

Wow, Florida. See the details here.

Hello, California. Get the full picture here.

Interpreting the Results

Metro areas with the highest number of jobs relative to their popluation in two housing-related fields:

Key:

Constuction Workers.

Drywall Installers.