The CE jobs measure tracks the inputs and outputs of goods in a city’s ‘boundaries’ through the material import dependency of the city’s economic sectors. At the same time, tracking and assessing the circularity of the local jobs in these economic sectors will provide city leaders with an indication of which sectors circularity is happening and could potentially happen.

Employment can be used as an indicator of CE, and this is done by integrating two approaches –a method produced by United Nations Environment Programme, which is based on urban metabolism; and IO analysis and a framework for CE from Circle Economy. When merging these two methods, an input-output analysis can be done on the city level. The following are the aims of this analysis:
 

• Consider the strategic and practical application of CE at the city level, defining 'key elements of the circular economy.' An overview of all the elements with the description provided e.g. prioritising regenerative resources or use waste as a resource.
• Illustrate how cities contribute to the overall global raw material consumption reduction by quantifying the material import dependencies using raw material equivalents. The approach, which is taken in this paper, is a simplified measure of the Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis. It uses resource input-output tables with local data.
• Combine the two methods to make CE jobs measure globally replicable. In addition, this measure can help develop a CE plan at city level. The combined method is a three-part calculation: (1) the circular activity in core sectors is calculated; (2) the circular activity in enabling circular sectors is calculated; (3) proportion of circular activity within indirect circular sectors is calculated.

This paper concludes that the process of coming to the CE jobs has two parts – the first more relevant to the local government and the second better influenced by the national government. Both need to come together for a truly circular local economy to happen.

This methodology is a more high-end calculation, but the report shows how to calculate this for each city and its sectors. For this reason, the methodology is helpful for cities to calculate how many CE jobs already exist and the percentage of circular jobs in each sector. This information could help identify where gaps and blind spots are as well as provide insights into where cities can make the most impact by implementing Circular Systemic Solutions.