Mark Knold,
Supervising Economist
“The government knows everything about everyone.”
Fortunately,
that statement is not true. Yet society still looks to the government to
provide answers to comprehensive and complex questions that have their
foundation within individual decisions and activities. One subject frequently
directed toward the government is individual-level information about the
economy — particularly, what occupations are in demand, what occupations pay
well and have lucrative outlooks, and ultimately, what occupation(s) should I
build my career upon?
It takes the
accumulation of a wide array of individual information to answer these
questions. Employers provide the foundation information about the occupations
they employ. Jobs are held by individuals, but employers provide the profile
information about the job itself, not any particular individual.
Since
society desires to profile such a broad spectrum of the economy — occupational
profiles and the occupational distribution within the economy — only government
is in the unique position to collect, analyze and provide answers for said
desire. Yet, no government program or regulatory agency mandates any
comprehensive occupational reporting from individuals or businesses. Therefore,
government attempts to fill the void with an ongoing, robust and voluntary
survey of employers — a survey where employers are asked to provide details
about their various occupations, including descriptions, quantities,
wages/salaries and location. Through this survey emerges an occupational
portrait of an economy.
The U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) structures and funds the survey, yet the
individual states conduct the survey. Under BLS administration, all states use
the same methodology; therefore, occupational profiles are comparable across
states.
Through this
survey, analysts discover how industries are populated with various
occupations. Accountant is an occupation, yet accountants can be found across
many different industries. Other occupations may be more exclusive to certain
industries; for example, doctors are largely found only in the healthcare
industry. One of the survey’s products is that industries can be profiled with
their general mix of occupations. This is called an industry’s occupational
staffing pattern.
This brings
us back to the original questions: what occupations are in demand, what
occupations pay well and have lucrative outlooks, and ultimately, what
occupation(s) should I build my career upon?
The
foundation is to make informed forecasts about how industries will
expand/contract over the next 10 years. By applying existing occupational
staffing patterns to each industry’s projected change, a trained economic
analyst can then make an extrapolation about how occupations will
correspondingly increase/decrease. Knowledgeable analyst judgment further
refines the occupational expectations, such as knowing an occupation will grow
faster than in the past, with the result being a set of occupational
projections that accumulate to profile a state or regional economy.
A new set of
occupational projections are done every two years to keep the information fresh
even though economies do not change dramatically in short order. Because of
slow change, updated occupational projects generally continue the overall
message of preceding occupational projections. But economies do modify with
time, and therefore, subtle changes will arise with each new set of
occupational projections.
Utah’s most
recent occupational projections are found here: http://www.jobs.utah.gov/wi/pubs/outlooks/state/index.html.
These projections look forward to the year 2024.
The
occupational profile is structured from the general to the detailed, mimicking
the structure of a family tree. First, broad occupational categories are
defined, such as management or healthcare occupations; then, subcategories are
defined; and finally, individual occupations are defined. Individual
occupations are the heart of the occupational projections. But overall patterns
and characteristics do emerge when observing the broader categories.
While a Utah
statewide profile leads the way, Utah’s local economies are not homogenous;
therefore, nine Utah subregions are also profiled. Due to confidentiality
restraints and statistical reliability, the amount of occupations available
will diminish the smaller a subregion; but, occupations comprising the backbone
of a regional economy will be available.
Salt Lake City MSA
Cory Stahle,
Regional Economist
The following are some general highlights gleaned from the Salt Lake
City Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) — Salt Lake and Tooele counties
combined — occupational projections:
As mentioned above, individuals often look to government to understand the
outlook for specific jobs. Through the occupational projections, outlook is
measured in three ways: 1) job openings, 2) job growth and 3) wages.
Job openings are estimated based upon two major factors: replacements
and growth. Replacements occur as individuals change occupations, retire or
leave the labor force; while growth refers to labor market expansion and the
addition of new jobs. The sum of these two factors result in total openings for
each occupation or the economy as a whole. Current projections indicate that,
on average each year between 2014 and 2024, occupations in the Salt Lake City
metro area will generate 33,010 total annual openings.
In addition to openings, job growth rates are calculated for the total
of all occupations and their subgroups. For Salt Lake metro, total occupations
are projected to grow at 2.6 percent annually through 2024, with computer
related occupations expecting the highest growth at 4.1 percent.
These two statistics — job openings and job growth rate — measure
different things. Annual openings are influenced by occupations with higher
levels of employment and turnover, because these jobs require more
replacements. This is illustrated in the Salt Lake City metro as the
occupations with the highest number of average annual openings are customer
service representatives, retail salespersons and fast food workers. Conversely,
annual growth does not account for employment size and turnover and can often
overstate the outlook for smaller occupations.
However, when openings and growth are combined, the outlook becomes
clearer. On the embedded visualization below, we limited annual growth rates to
occupations with at least 75 annual openings and found web developers,
post-secondary health teachers and software developers to have the strongest
employment outlook in the Salt Lake metro.
The final piece used to form occupational outlook is wages. In order to
understand the relationship between openings, growth and wages, the Department
of Workforce Services publishes star ratings. Through a process of statistical
weighting, occupations are assigned ratings from zero to five stars based on outlook.
As an example, a job with strong growth/openings and relatively high pay would
be assigned the highest or five-star ranking. In contrast, a job with limited
employment outlook and low wages would be assigned zero stars.
In the current projections, 87 occupations were identified as five-star
jobs in the Salt Lake City MSA. These jobs range from general practitioners to
wholesale and retail buyers. The five-star occupation with the largest number
of openings over the next 10 years is general and operations managers.
Whether you are a policy maker, business owner or individual looking to
make decisions about a career or education, you can begin to see what a
valuable informational tool occupational projections are. In addition to the
embedded visualizations, please visit the Occupational Comparison
Dashboard for more projections data.
