New 2012-2022 BLS Employment Projections: What Career Counselors Need to Know

The U.S. 2012-2022 Employment Projections provide new data for career counselors and career development professionals to rely upon in helping people make career and education choices.  I put together a summary of resources to help you incorporate this new information in your work. You can make your own expert “take” on the data based on your experience and geographic area.

Start with the Basics and the Big Picture

You will find helpful summaries about the projections in the Winter 2013/14 issue of the Occupational Outlook Quarterly. The graphics are great for people (like me) who need a visual boost to understand data. If you are short on time, read the Introduction and the Occupational Employment section (the PDF versions are easier to read).  For those of us who do not work with these numbers every day, it helps to get reminders on how to interpret the data.  For example, “faster growth” does not necessarily mean a greater number of new jobs.

Trends and Highlights 

• Occupations related to healthcare are projected to have the fastest growth and add the most new jobs.
• Most growing occupations require a degree or post-secondary training/certification.
• Workers make more money with a degree or post-secondary training/certification.
• More older people will be working and working longer (the 65-75 age group more than any other group).
• The labor force continues to become more diverse with Caucasians’ share declining and Hispanics’ share to rise.
• The construction industry is recovering, but not yet to 2007 levels.
• Most job growth is coming from replacing workers, not new jobs. 

Most of the trends are unsurprising given technology advances and the state of our economy.  Issues continue with unemployment, underemployment, and most job creation in poorly paid retail and service occupations.

Best Graphs to Look At

The best graphs to understand job outlook by occupation are in the Occupational Employment Section of the OOQ I mentioned earlier.  If you want to drill down to promising occupations by degree level, scroll down to the last half of the article (page 13 on the PDF).

Differences between the 2010-2020 and 2012-2022 Projections

Laurence Shatkin nicely summarizes in his Career Laboratory Blog the differences between the employment projections two years ago and the new ones just released.

Help Others with Critical Thinking

It pays to help people evaluating career choices take a hard look at how “promising” and growing certain occupations are. For example, lawyers continue to get a high growth and median wage marks in the BLS data.  But the legal profession is going through big upheaval and change, due to technology, the Internet, offshoring, and businesses’ willingness to pay the high cost of using large law firms.  There is also a wide gap between the number of middle-class and low income people needing legal representation and lawyers who can afford to serve them. For example, the Washington State bar association magazine has had a number of articles about these changes and the difficulties for young lawyers to get hired.  So people should not just immediately look at the graph and say, hey – lawyers is a promising career. It may be for some but there are many variables to consider.

New Projections and Occupations Added to the Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH)

The new job outlook information is now available for specific occupations in the Occupational Outlook Handbook, just out yesterday (January 8, 2014).

As a consequence, Career Key updated its career interest inventory to include several new occupations added to the Handbook (see the Teacher’s Guide below) along with the new job outlook projections for all the test’s occupations.

There is a new version of the OOH “Not just for teachers” Teacher’s Guide, that includes a list of the new occupations listed in the Handbook. Counselors and other career development professionals will find the explanations and context for data helpful.

Funny Note: The OOH's occupational profile for legislators has been deleted, gone the way of textile occupations.  Hmmm. 

We are huge fans of both the Occupational Outlook Handbook and the Occupational Outlook Quarterly. As Mr. Shatkin points out in his blog, we are extremely lucky to have government resources like these. Even Canada, Great Britain and other countries you would think have similar resources - in fact, do not.  So give a cheer for OOH and OOQ author, the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics and have fun with numbers! It only comes once every two years…