New Braunfels EDC recently completed a Labor Shed Study to get a closer look at the workforce of New Braunfels – specifically the study sought to understand the characteristics of the local and regional workforce. While the reliability of gathering workforce data is challenging at best, the use of cell phone global positioning system (GPS) data makes this data collection pool more manageable. A third-party provider was contacted to collect the data for the study which identified over 370,000 unique work locations within New Braunfels, San Marcos, and Seguin city limits – these employers would be used to define in-commuter and out-commuter traffic which would ultimately define were the GPS data originated from – hence in- and out-commute.

The data that was collected also allowed for the defining of those commuters’ profiles. These profiles allow the researcher to align people into categories such as “fast track couples,” “sophisticated city dwellers,” and “balance and harmony” and they all represent a specific segment that sorted households by age, income level, household size, and age of children. These different segments provide much more information that help showcase labor availability from the labor-supply perspective and furthermore, provide community leadership, along with current and future employers - ways to motivate employees to remain on the job or help recruit new talent in to the talent pool.