Employment diversity

Framework / Assessment
Summary

An economic diversity index can be developed to describe the industries and sectors present in an economy. If economic diversity is defined as “a large number of different types of industries being present in an area” or “the extent to which the economic activity of a region is distributed among a number of industrial sectors,” a summary statistic can be used to describe the diversity of an area and compare it to other areas. Measures such as location quotients compare local areas’ proportional employment in industries to those of a larger region. The Shannon-Weaver Diversity Index measures diversity of employment, considering both numbers of industries present and the distribution of employment across them, against a uniform distribution where employment is equi-proportional across all industries.