NOT TO LABOR THE POINT
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Before you scroll down, how many jobs can you think of that have a very strong association with a particular state? You might come up with cowboys in Oklahoma, actors in California, peach growers in Georgia, alligator wranglers in Florida. (Okay, fine, alligator wrangler isn't a real job, but this exercise is harder than you might think!)

Unfortunately, none of our guesses made it on this map of the most iconic job in every state from HowMuch:

 

[HowMuch]

"Iconic" isn't exactly a technical term, so this map uses a metric called location quotient as a proxy. 24/7 Wall St., which created the list of iconic jobs that the map is based on, explains how it works:

The location quotient measures the relative concentration of jobs by comparing how common an occupation is in a state compared to how common it is nationwide. For example, crop farm workers comprise 0.02% of the nationwide workforce. In California, crop farm workers comprise 1.1% of the workforce. No other job in California is more concentrated compared to its concentration in the nationwide labor market.

[24/7 Wall St.]


Of course, there are certainly a few stereotype-conforming jobs on the map, like physicists in New Mexico, gaming service workers in Nevada and fashion designers in New York. There are also a few head-scratchers โ€” who knew typing was such a big industry in Pennsylvania? But if you study up, you'll have a killer opening line to whip out the next time someone tells you which state they're from. 

<p>L.V. Anderson is Digg's managing editor.</p>

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