Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services in Dayton

Continuing with the County Business Patterns
(clicking on the charts will enlarge them)

The PS&T sector experienced growth in payroll, increasing from 6% to 10% between 1998 and 2005 as a share of Montgomery County aggregate payroll, becoming the 3rd largest sector after health care and manufacturing.

Let’s take a look at this sector.

PS&T is made up of various subsectors, such as legal services, accountancy, engineering and architecture and related fields, specialized services such graphic, industrial, and interior design, computer services such as custom programming, system design, and computer aided facility management service. PS&T also includes, consulting of various types, scientific R&D, advertising and public relations, and a grab bag of “other” services, ranging from commercial & portrait photography to veterinarians.



Some things not included are doctors, finance and insurance and some infotech fields like software publishing, web portals, ISPs, and database management.

Looking at the subsector payrolls between 1998 and 2005, two things stand out.

1. The strength of engineering. One would expect this to be in line with legal and accountancy, but engineering is higher than both in both payroll and employment. Unfortunately NAICS does not give detail as to what kinds of engineering, (civil, aerospace, etc.) so one can’t tell if there is a certain type that is stronger than the others.

2. The impressive growth of computer services. This subsector stands out as being the real driver of the growth in PS&T. This is mostly in “custom programming” and “computer systems design

The payroll trends show quite clearly the big bounce and high growth in computer services. The other sectors are not as strong, somewhat anemic, actually. R&D is unexpectedly weak. Consulting seems to be growing, though.

Looking at actual jobs, the growth, and big jump in one year, in Computer Services is again striking, as is the slow to no grow of the other sub sectors. Engineering again is leading legal services and accountancy, having has about as much as the two combined. But not much jobs being added.




The size of establishments in computer services in Montgomery County is interesting, too: this is a sector made up of a large number of small establishments, with establishments employing over 100 people being few. Yet the number of smaller firms decreases in recent years, and larger firms (employing over 1000) start to appear in 2004 and 2005 maybe indicating that employment is starting to concentrate into larger firms.

It would be interesting to see what these trends look like adding in FY06 and 07 data.

Next, a look at neighboring Greene County, which presents an interesting contrast.