Evaluating BLS labor force, employment, and occupation projections for 2000

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 128, Issue 7, 2005, Pages 46-56

  Stekler, H O ^a   Thomas, Rupin ^a  

^a GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 28244493411     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: 00981818     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (28)

1. A governing principle of such an evaluation is that the forecaster should not be penalized for external errors nor benefit if the external errors offset the internal mistakes.
2. See Howard N Fullerton, Jr., "New labor force projections, spanning 1988 to 2000," Monthly Labor Review, November 1989, pp. 3-11;
3. Valerie Personick, "Industry output and employment: a slower trend for the nineties," Monthly Labor Review, November 1989, pp. 25-41;
4. and George Silvestri and John Lukasiewicz, "Projections of occupational employment," Monthly Labor Review, November 1989, pp. 42-65.
5. See Howard N Fullerton, Jr., "Another look at the labor force," Monthly Labor Review, November 1993, pp. 31-40;
6. Andrew Alpert and Jill Auyer, "Evaluating the BLS 1988-2000 employment projections," Monthly Labor Review, October 2003, pp. 3-12;
7. and Arthur Andreassen, "An evaluation of the 2000 employment by industry projections," Bureau of Labor Statistics mimeo.
8. Because the projections that are being analyzed in this article were prepared in 1988, the forecast period is 12 years in length. Consequently, the change from 1976 to 1988 was used as the basis for this benchmark.
9. H.O. Stekler, "Macroeconomic Forecast Evaluation Techniques," International Journal of Forecasting, Vol. 7, 1991, pp. 375-84.
10. The problem is not due to the length of the forecast horizon because long-run population forecasts have been evaluated using these error measures. Rather, this problem occurs when there are a small number of observations. See Stanley K. Smith and Terry Sinich, "Evaluating the Forecast Accuracy and Bias of Alternative Population Projections for States," International Journal of Forecasting, Vol. 8, 1992, pp. 495-508.
11. However, if a set of such single forecasts is available, the quantitative measures could then be used to evaluate the set of these predictions. It is thus imperative to also calculate the quantitative statistics so that eventually an entire set of forecasts can be evaluated.
12. H.O. Stekler (1991) and R. Fildes and Stekler (2002) noted that these error measures are descriptive statistics and do not inform whether the forecasts are "good" or "bad". To make such a judgment, a benchmark is required. It is then possible to determine whether the forecasts being evaluated are more accurate than those generated by the benchmark procedure. In addition, it is desirable to be able to use a statistical test to determine whether the two sets of forecasts are significantly different. See H.O. Stekler, "Macroeconomic Forecast Evaluation. . .";
13. and R. Fildes and H.O. Stekler, "The State of Macroeconomic Forecasting," Journal of Macroeconomic Forecasting, Vol. 24, 2002, pp. 435-468.
14. Howard N Fullerton, Jr., "Evaluating the BLS labor force projections to 2000," Monthly Labor Review, October 2003, pp. 3-12.
15. The BLS forecast is also more accurate than a naïve model that would have predicted the growth rate from 1988-2000 would be identical to that observed from 1976-1988. That naïve model would have predicted the labor force to grow at an annual rate of 2 percent. See Howard N Fullerton, Jr., "New Labor Force Projections, Spanning..."
16. The errors occurred in the youngest and oldest age groups of both men and women.
17. R.A. Kolb and H.O. Stekler, "Information Content of Long-Term Employment Forecasts," Applied Economics, 1992, pp. 593-96.
18. See Howard N Fullerton, Jr., "Labor force projections: 1986 to 2000," Monthly Labor Review, September 1987, pp. 19-29;
19. "New labor force projections, Spanning...";
20. "Labor force projections: the baby boom moves on," Monthly Labor Review, November 1991, pp. 31-44;
21. "Another look at the labor force...";
22. and 'The 2005 labor force: growing, but slowly," Monthly Labor Review, November 1995, pp. 29-44.
23. Even though the MAPE is not useful in evaluating a single forecast, this statistic can be used when single forecasts are combined into a set of forecasts.
24. Valerie Personick, "Industry output and employment..."
25. This result suggests that exfrapolative methods may have been the basis of the BLS projections.
26. Arthur Andreassen, "An Evaluation of the 2000 Employment..."
27. This benchmark could only be used for the major occupational groupings because the definitions of the disaggregated groupings have changed.
28. The naïve model generated identical results.