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If a concentration of highly skilled workers is an important leading indicator to more widespread economic growth, which regions are leading the way? Using data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) to compare the educational attainment rates of the nation’s largest labor forces from 2005 to 2013, authors from the Cleveland State University Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs determine where America’s highest-skilled jobs are clustering.

The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana metropolitan area is home to the largest number of manufacturing jobs in the country, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Approximately 510,900 people are employed by manufacturing firms in the Los Angeles metro, about 100,000 more than in the Chicago-Joliet-Naperville area, which is ranked second for manufacturing employment. Other top metros include New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown and Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington.

Groups in the greater Detroit and Pittsburgh regions recently released reports documenting the progress these metros have made over the past few years in building thriving technology economies. Detroit’s Automation Alley found that tech industry employment in the region grew by 15 percent in 2011, outpacing growth in all of the other 14 regions used as benchmarks in the study.