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Nine US occupations run the machinery of importing and exporting: customs brokers and trade-compliance officers, freight forwarders, logisticians, global buyers, trade economists, cargo inspectors, and the managers above them. Together they employed 2,421,870 people in May 2025, and BLS projects roughly 218,300 openings a year across them through 2034. Every figure below traces to the BLS OEWS survey and Employment Projections program; nothing is estimated by us.
Pick an occupation. The map shades each state's location quotient, the share of the state's jobs in this occupation relative to the national share: above 1.00 means the state is specialized in it.
The federal government is the anchor employer for customs and trade-policy work; brokers, forwarders, carriers, and every large importer hire the rest. Customs brokers are licensed by CBP through the Customs Broker License Examination. These are live, real hiring surfaces, not listings we generate:
| US Customs and Border Protection | Import specialists, CBP officers, licensed customs broker oversight |
| US International Trade Commission (via USAJOBS) | Trade economists, industry analysts, trade-remedy investigators |
| International Trade Administration | Commercial service officers, trade specialists, AD/CVD enforcement |
| USAJOBS: "import specialist" | Live federal openings for import specialist roles |
| USAJOBS: "international trade" | All federal international-trade postings in one query |
| USAJOBS: "customs" | Customs-related federal postings (CBP and beyond) |
Occupations are the nine SOC codes with a direct import/export function; customs brokers and import specialists are classified within Compliance Officers 13-1041 (O*NET 13-1041.08), so that occupation is broader than trade alone, as are Economists and the clerk and manager occupations. Wages and employment: BLS OEWS May 2025, cross-industry, all states plus DC, PR, GU, VI. Outlook: BLS Employment Projections 2024-34 all-industry occupation matrix; the aspect-code mapping (change, percent, openings) was verified against the published values for 13-1041 and 13-1081. Pipeline: scripts/ingest/build_trade_careers.py.