Occupational employment projections to 2014

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 128, Issue 11, 2005, Pages 70-81

  Hecker, Daniel E ^a  

^a BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS   (United States)

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EID: 29244442652     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (14)

1. Occupational projections presented in this article provide information to those interested in labor market issues. They also provide the background for analyses of future employment opportunities described in the forthcoming 2006-07 Occupational Outlook Handbook. The Internet version of this edition of the Handbook, which will be accessible at http://www.bls.gov/oco/, is expected to be available in late December 2005; the print version, BLS Bulletin 2600, should be available spring 2006. Job outlook information in the 2006-07 Handbook will use the projections presented in each of the articles in this issue of the Monthly Labor Review. For a description of the methodology used to develop employment projections, see BLS Handbook of Methods, Bulletin 2490 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, April 1997), Chapter 13, pp. 122-29.
2. Ninety-one percent of the increase is projected for those who are self-employed in their primary job, 9 percent for those who are self-employed in their secondary job.
3. For more information on occupation groups (and occupations), see Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget, Standard Occupational Classification Manual, 2000 (Lanham, MD, Bernan Associates, 2000).
4. Base-year employment data were developed with the use of the Occupational Employment Statistics Survey, supplemented with data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) for self-employed and unpaid family workers.
5. See Norman C. Saunders, "A summary of BLS projections to 2014", this issue, pp. 3-9, for more on offshore outsourcing.
6. See Daniel E. Hecker, "Employment impact of electronic business", Monthly Labor Review, May 2001, pp. 3-16, especially p. 5.
7. The education and training categories listed in tables 2, 3, and 4 best describe the postsecondary education or training needed by most workers to become fully qualified in their jobs. However, for many occupations, there are other sources of education and training as well. Data from the BLS Current Population Survey show that, for most occupations, workers have a variety of education levels. More detail on education and training is available in the Occupational Outlook Handbook; more on education and training categories is available in Occupational Projections and Training Data, 2004-05 edition, Bulletin 2572 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, March 2004), and Occupational Projections and Training Data, 2006-07 edition, Bulletin 2602 (Bureau of Labor Statistics, forthcoming.) (See also note 1.)
8. Hecker, "Employment impact".
9. Net separations do not count all movements of workers out of an occupation, a measure termed total separations. For example, an opening caused by a worker who stops working for a time and then gets another job in his or her previous occupation would be counted in the measure of total separations, but not in net separations. (See the discussion on the uses of information on replacement needs in Occupational Projections and Training Data.)
10. CPS data for the years 2000-04 were used for small occupations. (For a definition of a "small" occupation, see Occupational Projections and Training Data.)
11. A high school occupation is defined as an occupation in which the percentage of employees aged 25 to 44 years and having high school as their highest level of educational attainment is greater than or equal to 60 percent and the percentage of those with some college or with a bachelor's degree or higher are each less than 20 percent. Occupations requiring some college and college occupations are similarly defined. (That is, the definitions are identical to that of a high school occupation, except that the terms some college and high school, in the one case, and college and high school, in the other, are interchanged.) Three "mixture" occupations are defined as well. An occupation requiring high school/some college is defined as an occupation in which the percentages of those with at most a high school diploma or some college as their highest level of educational attainment are each greater than or equal to 20 percent, while the percentage with a bachelor's degree or higher is less than 20 percent. Occupations described as some college/college are similarly defined. (That is, the terms some college and college replace high school and some college, respectively.) High school/some college/college occupations are defined as occupations in which 20 or more percent of employees have an education level of high school, some college, or college.
12. For further discussion of the methodology used to develop the data, see Occupational Projections and Training Data, 2004-05 edition, Chapter 1; and Occupational Projections and Training Data, 2006-7 edition.
13. The distribution of jobs by cluster data differs slightly from the actual educational attainment of individuals in 2004.
14. Note that the 36-percent figure is not an estimate of the percentage of jobs that will "require" a college degree. (See Occupational Projections and Training Data, 2006-07 edition, p. 34, note 5.)