A Dallas professor has created an easier, less-expensive way to determine how prevalent given occupations are in U.S. metropolitan areas.

Evan Stair

Evan Stair, a self-proclaimed “map lover,” is licensing the data tool he built to economic development organizations nationwide. He’s already found his first customer, the city of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

“This tool has been in the back of my mind for about eight years now,” said Stair, who teaches classes on geographic information science as an adjunct lecturer at his alma mater, the University of Texas at Dallas.

Stair’s technology enables non-technical people to easily access data tied to “location quotients,” a measure of how concentrated given occupations are in a region compared to the national average.

Stair’s technology enables non-technical people to easily access data tied to “location quotients,” a measure of how concentrated given occupations are in a region compared to the national average.

In North Texas, for instance, the number of “semiconductor processors” is 3.92 times higher than the average across U.S. metro areas. Working at places such as Dallas-based Texas Instruments, semiconductor processors help build chips for computing devices.

“I wanted this tool to be self-service, rather than relying on specialized analysts,” said Stair, a Dallas-based contractor who previously worked at large real estate brokerages such as JLL and CBRE.

Stair’s system also provides employment projections for professions, something he hopes can assist community colleges and other schools in determining the curriculums they should offer down the road.

Sample, E.L. Stair occupation data

He’s laying the groundwork for his next project, a site-selection tool to help retailers find, say, spots nationwide near households with median annual incomes of $60,000-plus. He hasn’t set a release date for that project.

Stair is new enough to the entrepreneurial life that he doesn’t yet have a website for his business, E.L. Stair.

“That’s in the process of being built,” he said. 

In the meantime, he can be reached through his email, which is available on his LinkedIn profile.

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