County data desk
Where are home care jobs densest against the older population? St. Louis County, at 25.2 jobs per 1,000 residents aged 65 and over.
The supply page on this desk counts businesses. This page counts the people those businesses employ, which is closer to what arrives at a door, and the two measures disagree about the order of the counties. Seven counties can be ranked; eight cannot, and they are shown as such rather than as zero.
Methodology
- Metric
- Private home care employment divided by residents aged 65 and over, multiplied by 1,000, sorted descending. Computed by this desk; neither source agency publishes it. Only the seven counties whose employment figure BLS actually publishes are ranked. Seven items clears this desk's six item floor for a ranking and does not clear its ten row floor for a table, so the page is presented as a ranking of seven with the remaining eight counties listed separately and unranked.
- Source
- Numerator: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, 2024 Q4 county files read at data.bls.gov/cew/data/api/2024/4/area/, private ownership (own_code 5), NAICS 621610 home health care services, column month3_emplvl, which is employment in December 2024. Establishments are column qtrly_estabs. Denominator: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program, Vintage 2024, column AGE65PLUS_TOT, rows coded YEAR 6.
- Reference date
- December 2024 for employment; July 1, 2024 for population. The two are five months apart and the page does not pretend otherwise.
- Item set
- All 15 counties of the St. Louis MO-IL metropolitan statistical area. Three counties carry an establishment count but have employment withheld under BLS disclosure code N. Five have no NAICS 621610 row at all. None of the eight is assigned a rate, a rank or a zero.
- Pulled
- September 10, 2026, both files.
- Licence
- Public domain, works of the United States government. NAICS 621610 mixes medical and non-medical home care into one code, so this is not a count of non-medical caregivers.
| # | County | State | Employment | Establishments | Aged 65 and over | Jobs per 1,000 | Jobs per establishment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | St. Louis County | Missouri | 5,023 | 242 | 199,345 | 25.2 | 20.8 |
| 2 | St. Clair County | Illinois | 1,153 | 27 | 46,500 | 24.8 | 42.7 |
| 3 | St. Louis city | Missouri | 949 | 77 | 46,992 | 20.2 | 12.3 |
| 4 | Madison County | Illinois | 419 | 15 | 51,448 | 8.1 | 27.9 |
| 5 | Franklin County | Missouri | 164 | 6 | 21,777 | 7.5 | 27.3 |
| 6 | St. Charles County | Missouri | 524 | 35 | 76,887 | 6.8 | 15.0 |
| 7 | Jefferson County | Missouri | 86 | 3 | 41,443 | 2.1 | 28.7 |
Employment is month3_emplvl, the December 2024 count. Jobs per establishment is the employment column divided by the establishment column and is printed for context only; it is not the sort key.
| County | State | Employment | Establishments | Aged 65 and over | Jobs per 1,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lincoln County | Missouri | withheld, code N | 2 | 10,226 | not computed |
| Warren County | Missouri | withheld, code N | 1 | 7,504 | not computed |
| Clinton County | Illinois | withheld, code N | 1 | 7,320 | not computed |
| Macoupin County | Illinois | no row published | no row published | 9,911 | not computed |
| Monroe County | Illinois | no row published | no row published | 7,471 | not computed |
| Jersey County | Illinois | no row published | no row published | 4,663 | not computed |
| Bond County | Illinois | no row published | no row published | 3,272 | not computed |
| Calhoun County | Illinois | no row published | no row published | 1,077 | not computed |
Withheld, code N: BLS suppresses the employment figure to protect an identifiable employer but still publishes the establishment count. No row published: the county has no NAICS 621610 row in the 2024 Q4 file at all. The eight counties together hold 51,444 residents aged 65 and over, 9.6 percent of the region's 535,836.
Businesses and jobs put the counties in a different order
On the supply page, which ranks establishments per 1,000 older adults, the city of St. Louis leads the region at 1.64 and St. Louis County follows at 1.21. Ranked on jobs instead, St. Louis County leads at 25.2 per 1,000, St. Clair County, Illinois, is second at 24.8, and the city drops to third at 20.2. The city has many small employers: 77 establishments and 949 jobs, 12.3 per establishment. St. Clair County has fewer, larger ones: 27 establishments and 1,153 jobs, 42.7 per establishment.
St. Charles County moves the other way. Fourth among the seven by establishments at 0.46 per 1,000, it is sixth by jobs at 6.8, because its 35 establishments employ 524 people, an average of 15.0. Franklin County, with six establishments and 164 jobs, edges ahead of it at 7.5 per 1,000.
Jefferson County is last on both measures and by a wide margin on this one: 86 jobs against 41,443 residents aged 65 and over, 2.1 per 1,000. That is roughly one twelfth of the St. Louis County rate for a county that shares a border with it.
Where the jobs are
St. Louis County and the city of St. Louis together report 5,972 of the 8,318 published jobs, 71.8 percent, against 246,337 residents aged 65 and over, which is 50.9 percent of the seven ranked counties' older population. The other three counties that can be ranked, Madison, Franklin and St. Charles, carry rates between 6.8 and 8.1, roughly a third of the core.
The rate across all seven ranked counties combined is 17.2 per 1,000. That figure is not a regional rate: it excludes eight counties and 51,444 older adults whose employment figure the file does not carry, and this desk does not fill that gap with an assumption.
What a job count does not tell you
Employment is counted where the employer is registered, not where the work happens. A caregiver on a St. Louis County payroll who spends every shift in Jefferson County is a St. Louis County job in this file. A low rate in an outer county therefore describes where employers are based, and only loosely where older adults are being served. Check a provider's own published service area against the address before reading anything into a county's row.
NAICS 621610 combines Medicare certified skilled home health with non-medical caregiver services in one industry code, and no public column separates the two. The 8,318 jobs on this page include nurses, therapists, aides, schedulers and office staff at both kinds of business. This page does not say how many of them provide non-medical care, because the file does not.
BLS withholds employment more readily than it withholds establishment counts, which is why the supply page can rank ten counties and this page can rank seven. A withheld figure is a figure that exists and is hidden; a missing row is one that was never reported. The two are kept apart in the second table and neither is rendered as zero. Sources and column codes in full are on the methodology page.
Back to the region at a glance · The same counties by establishments