Evaluating the 1996-2006 employment projections

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 133, Issue 9, 2010, Pages 33-69

  Wyatt, Ian D ^a  

^a BLS Office of Occupational Statistics and Employment Projections   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 77958172543     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. Monthly Labor Review, November 1997, pp. 3-83.
2. For a complete list of the Bureau's evaluations of its projections, see www.bls.gov/emp/ep_pub_projections_eval.htm (visited Sept. 1, 2010).
3. See H.O. Stekler and Rupin Thomas, "Evaluating BLS labor force, employment, and occupation projections for 2000," Monthly Labor Review, July 2005, pp. 46-56, on the Internet at www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2005/07/art5full.pdf (visited Sept. 1, 2010).
4. See Michael E. Fix and Jeffrey S. Passel, "U.S. Immigration at the Beginning of the 21st Century," (Washington, DC, Urban Institute, Aug. 2, 2001) on the Internet at www.urban.org/publications/900417.html (visited May 25, 2010).
5. Annual Estimates of the Population by Sex, Race, and Hispanic or Latino Origin for the United States: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2006 (Census Bureau), on the Internet at www.census.gov/popest/national/asrh/NC-EST2006-srh.html (visited May 19, 2010).
6. One example of the changes to GDP involved computer software. In 1999 historical GDP was revised upwards when certain business expenditures for computer software were reclassified as investments. Previously, only software embedded in equipment by the producer of that equipment was counted as investment. Business purchases for own-account production (that is, software produced by a business for its own use) had been classified as inputs to production.
7. Government purchases of own-account production of software (software produced by a government agency for its own use) shifted from one category of GDP, government consumption expenditures, to another category, gross government investment
8. Divisions in the SIC system are comparable to sectors in the NAICS. Because of data comparability issues, some of the industry divisions used in this article are not perfectly comparable to the divisions used in the November 1997 issue of the Monthly Labor Review or to the divisions in the official SIC manual. The transportation, communications, electric, gas, and sanitary services division was broken into three parts: transportation, communications, and utilities. The wholesale trade and retail trade divisions were combined into the trade sector. Federal Government is treated as a division, as is State and local government. The individual industries referred to in this article are a mix of two-digit and three-digit SIC industries.
9. The tables used to convert the NAICS-based CES data to an SIC basis can be found on the Internet at www.bls.gov/ces/cesratiosemp.htm (visited Sept. 1, 2010).
10. The OES-SOC crosswalk identified four kinds of occupational matches: 1) one OES occupation to one SOC occupation 2) one OES occupation and more than one SOC occupation 3) more than one OES occupation to one SOC occupation 4) more than one OES occupation to more than one SOC occupation The fourth type of occupational match was eliminated because the lack of dual-coded data meant that ratios for converting the occupations did not exist. The results of the other three types of crosswalk matches were evaluated, and a list was compiled to look for trends in detailed occupations that were projected poorly. By looking at the year-over-year growth of several of these occupations, it became clear that the crosswalk was imperfect and missed a few occupations that changed significantly-increasing or decreasing by large amounts in the single year that the new classification system was implemented. The analysis was limited to occupations that fell into the first three types of occupational matches and did not show broader changes that could be attributed to the change in classification systems.
11. The original occupational employment projections article is the following: George T. Silvestri, "Occupational employment projections to 2006," Monthly Labor Review, November 1997, on the Internet at www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/1997/11/art5full.pdf (visited Sept. 1, 2010).
12. BLS uses Census Bureau data to calculate the size of the civilian noninstitutional population by subtracting those who are under the age of 16, in the active-duty armed forces, or institutionalized
13. Unless specified otherwise, in this article the term "men" refers to males 16 and older, and the term "women" refers to females 16 and older
14. More information on the Census Bureau's population projections is available on the Internet at www.census.gov/population/www/projections/index.html (visited Sept. 1, 2010).
15. Interview with Mitra Toossi on May 21, 2010. In addition, see Howard N. Fullerton Jr., "Evaluating the BLS labor force projections to 2000," Monthly Labor Review, October 2003, pp. 3-12; see especially p. 11.
16. In the broad race category system currently employed by BLS, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, Native Hawaiians, and Native Alaskans are grouped with the multiple race category in a category called multiple race and other. For the analysis in this article, the group was moved back to the Asian group to reflect the categories used in creating the 2006 projections. Because the multiple race group cannot, by definition, be assigned to a single race category, it was impossible to adjust this group to reflect the race categories used to create the 2006 projections in 1996.
17. See figure 2 on p. 4 of Michael Hoefer, Nancy Rytina, and Bryan C. Baker, "Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2008" (Department of Homeland Security, February 2009), on the Internet at www.dhs.gov/xlibrary/assets/statistics/publications/ois_ill_pe_2008.pdf (visited July 19, 2010).
18. For a list of the key assumptions, see table 2 on p. 8 of Thomas Boustead, "The U.S. economy to 2006," Monthly Labor Review, November 1997, p. 6-22.
19. Unless otherwise noted, growth rates in this article are average annual growth rates
20. Analysis of Petroleum Imports/Exports & Movements (U.S. Energy Information Administration), on the Internet at http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/pet_pub_analysis_move.asp (visited May 19, 2010).
21. "Oil Prices and the U.S. Trade Deficit" Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Sept. 22, 2006, on the Internet at www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2006/el2006-24.html (visited May 19, 2010).
22. Chain-weighting changes altered the growth rate enough that when the original data (the row titled "original data, published in 1997 (billions of chained 1992 dollars)" in table 7) were simply moved from a 1992 real dollar basis to a 2000 real dollar basis (the row titled "original data (billions of chained 2000 dollars)" in table 7) the projected growth rate went from 2.1 percent to 2.5 percent. Since the historical growth rate for the 1986-1996 period was revised upwards from 2.3 percent to 2.9 percent because of the switch from chained 1992 dollars to chained 2000 dollars and definitional changes to GDP, it would be reasonable to estimate that the projected growth rate for the 1996-2006 period should be revised upwards by the same amount-from 2.1 percent to 2.7 percent. (See the last row of table 7.).
23. See Eric Belsky and Joel Prakken, Housing Wealth Effects: Housing's Impact on Wealth Accumulation, Wealth Distribution and Consumer Spending (Joint Center for Housing Studies, Harvard University, 2004), on the Internet at www.jchs.harvard.edu/publications/finance/w04-13.pdf (visited May 28, 2010).
24. Unpublished online survey, January 2010, conducted by Furniture Today and HGTV
25. "Oil Prices and the U.S. Trade Deficit" Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
26. See Jian Wang, "Durable Goods and the Collapse of Global Trade," Economic Letter-Insights from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, February 2010, on the Internet at www.dallasfed.org/research/eclett/2010/el1002.html (visited May 28, 2010).
27. Peter Orszag, Estimated Costs of U.S. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and of Other Activities Related to the War on Terrorism (Congressional Budget Office, Oct. 24, 2007), on the Internet at www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/86xx/doc8690/10-24-CostOfWar_Testimony.pdf (visited May 19, 2010).
28. The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2004-2013 (Congressional Budget Office, January 2003), p. 2, on the Internet at www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/40xx/doc4032/EntireReport_WithErrata.pdf (visited May 19, 2010).
29. The Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2006 to 2015 (Congressional Budget Office, January 2005), p. 55, on the Internet at www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/60xx/doc6060/01-25-BudgetOutlook.pdf (visited May 19, 2010).
30. Industry employment data in this analysis come from the Current Employment Statistics survey, which is limited to nonagricultural wage and salary employment