Alternative-1: Table with H3 for grouping row headers, TH in Rows 1 and 2 and no header-id markup

Characteristic Total Male Female
Number
(1,000)		 Percent of
employed		 Number
(1,000)		 Percent of
employed		 Number
(1,000)		 Percent of
employed
Total 7,655 5.2 3,833 4.9 3,822 5.6

Age:
16 to 19 years old 249 4.2 96 3.3 153 5.1
20 to 24 years old 738 5.3 309 4.2 429 6.5
25 to 54 years old 5,432 5.4 2,783 5.1 2,649 5.7
55 to 64 years old 1,022 5.1 522 4.9 501 5.2
65 years old and over 214 3.8 123 4.0 91 3.6

Race and Hispanic ethnicity:
White 6,467 5.4 3,250 5.0 3,217 5.9
Black or African American 753 4.7 375 5.0 379 4.4
Asian 249 3.6 119 3.2 130 4.1
Hispanic 638 3.1 353 2.9 284 3.5

Marital status:

Married, spouse present 4,215 5.1 2,435 5.3 1,780 5.0
Widowed, divorced, or separated 1,339 5.7 446 4.6 893 6.5
Single, never married 2,101 5.2 952 4.3 1,149 6.3

Full- or part-time status:

Primary job full-time, secondary job part-time 4,174 (X) 2,320 (X) 1,854 (X)
Both jobs part-time 1,764 (X) 531 (X) 1,233 (X)
Both jobs full-time 288 (X) 193 (X) 95 (X)
Hours vary on primary or secondary job 1,383 (X) 765 (X) 618 (X)

Note: The W3C validator (http://validator.w3.org/check) did not flag issues with h3 inside a TD tag. It failed when h3 was inside a TH tag. Now of course, it has a problem with use of scope on TD tag. I have noted that a cell whose headers attribute references a TD cell with an id value also does not pass muster although HTML 4.01 expressly recognizes this reality. I cannot imagine why the authors of HTML5 want to create a fiction by turning away from this truth. HTML5 should allow scope on TD cells and allow headers attribute to reference TD cells with id values.

Created by Sailesh Panchang, Deque Systems | October 11, 2013