DECEMBER 2015
Overall employment in the U.S. economy is projected to increase 6.5 percent during the 2014–24 decade, adding about 9.8 million new jobs. The most new jobs added and fastest job growth will occur in healthcare practitioners and technical occupations and healthcare support occupations. Projected changes to demographics as the population ages will drive the expected growth in the healthcare occupational groups. Production occupations and farming, fishing, and forestry occupations are the only major occupational groups projected to decline.
U.S. employment is projected to increase 6.5 percent during the 2014–24 decade, from 150.5 million jobs in 2014 to 160.3 million jobs in 2024. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Employment Projections program releases projections for 819 detailed occupations. Employment in 602 occupations is projected to increase, while employment in 217 occupations is projected to decline.
Healthcare support occupations and healthcare practitioners and technical occupations are projected to be the two fastest growing occupational groups, adding a combined 2.3 million jobs, about 1 in 4 new jobs. Figure 1 shows the share of total employment for these two groups in 2014 and projected 2024. The combined share of employment for these two groups is projected to increase from 8.3 percent of all jobs in 2014 to 9.2 percent of all jobs in 2024.
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Only two major occupational groups are projected to see employment decline: production occupations and farming, fishing, and forestry occupations. Together, these two groups are projected to shed 339,300 jobs during the projection period.
BLS produces long-term occupational projections to provide career guidance for jobseekers, students, and current workers looking at changing occupations. In addition, policymakers and educational authorities use BLS employment projections for long-term policy planning. Individual states also derive their own state and local-area projections from the national employment projections.
This article provides a comprehensive overview of the occupational projections for 2014–24. It details the projections process and methodology and examines the projected changes to major occupational groups, with summary analysis behind each projection. In addition, it highlights the detailed occupations that are growing the fastest, adding the most jobs, declining most rapidly, or losing the most jobs.
More detailed analysis and descriptions of occupational projections can be found in the Occupational Outlook Handbook, a BLS career-guidance publication.1 In addition to describing why particular occupations are expected to grow or decline, the Handbook includes job descriptions, duties, median pay, and guidance on how to enter an occupation.
This article references projected growth rates through the use of a standard set of “growth adjectives.” These growth adjectives allow users to compare growth rates among different occupations. The growth adjectives used are as follows:
· Much faster than average: 13.5 percent or higher
· Faster than average: at least 8.5 percent but less than 13.5 percent
· As fast as average: at least 4.5 percent but less than 8.5 percent
· Slower than average: at least 1.5 percent but less than 4.5 percent
· Little or no change: at least –1.5 percent but less than 1.5 percent
· Decline: less than –1.5 percent
The BLS employment projections process consists of six interrelated steps, each of which is based on a different procedure or model and assumptions: labor force, aggregate economy, final demand (gross domestic product [GDP]) by consuming sector and by product, industry output, industry employment, and employment and openings by occupation.2
Labor force projections are the primary constraint on future economic growth in the BLS employment projections process, and demographic changes in the civilian noninstitutional population of the United States are important in determining the size of the future workforce. The population is getting older, with people ages 55 and older projected to increase their share of the civilian noninstitutional population from 34.2 percent in 2014 to 38.2 percent in 2024. Because older people are less likely to be in the labor force, labor force participation rates are projected to decrease from 62.9 percent to 60.9 percent between 2014 and 2024. The size of the labor force is projected to increase by only 7.8 million, or 5.0 percent, over the same decade.3
Declining labor force participation rates are expected to hinder economic growth between 2014 and 2024. Real GDP is projected to increase by 2.2 percent annually during this period. Although this increase is in line with GDP growth during the recent economic recovery from 2010 to 2014, the 10-year average growth for GDP exceeded 3.0 percent from the 1960s through most of the 2000s.4
Macroeconomic variables, such as labor force, GDP and its components, and labor productivity, coupled with individual industry projection models, determine projected industry output and employment.5 Projected staffing patterns (the distribution of employment by occupation within an industry) that BLS developed are then applied to projected wage and salary employment for each industry to determine projected employment for each occupation in the industry. Occupational employment data for self-employed workers are projected separately. Total projected occupational employment is the sum of the projected employment for each wage and salary industry and self-employed workers.
Projected rates of change and numeric change for occupations are calculated by comparing projected-year occupational employment with base-year occupational employment.
Two factors affect employment change in an occupation:
1. Changes in industry employment
2. Changes in the mix of occupations (staffing pattern) in an industry
When an industry grows or declines, the occupations within that industry typically follow suit. For example, all U.S. Postal Service mail carriers are employed in the Postal Service industry, which is projected to decline by 27.8 percent from 2014 to 2024. Because Postal Service mail carriers in the Postal Service are not expected to differ significantly in the future, their projected change in employment reflects the declining employment projected for the Postal Service industry: Postal Service mail carriers are projected to decline in employment by 26.2 percent between 2014 and 2024.
BLS economists use qualitative and quantitative analyses to project how staffing patterns are likely to change between the base year (2014) and the projected year (2024). They examine historical staffing pattern data,6 and they conduct research on factors that may affect the utilization of occupations within given industries during the projection period. Some factors that may affect an occupation’s staffing pattern include the following:
· Technology. Changes in technology, such as machines or software, can increase worker productivity so that the same amount of work requires fewer workers. Technology can also replace workers altogether. For example, advancements in surveying technology, such as robotic total stations, have increased the amount of work a surveyor or surveying technician can do, reducing the demand for surveying technicians.
· Replacement of one product or service for another. Changing consumer preferences for one product or service over another can affect which occupations are employed in an industry. For example, as demand for carpeting decreases because of the rising popularity of other types of flooring materials, demand for carpet installers will decrease in the construction industry.
· Outsourcing. Companies sometimes contract support functions to other companies instead of hiring their own workers. This practice can drive down use of those workers in the companies that outsource the work but may increase use in another industry if the work is being outsourced domestically. For example, many industries are expected to outsource human resources specialists to professional employer organizations—companies that provide human resources services to client businesses.
· Organizational/work restructuring. Any type of change in job duties that produces the same output may increase or decrease the utilization of some occupations relative to others. For example, some law firms are rethinking their project staffing and rebuilding their support staff by hiring paralegals, who may be given some of the administrative tasks previously assigned to legal secretaries.
These changes cause occupations to grow at different rates within a given industry. For example, employment in the local elementary and secondary schools industry is projected to increase by 4.8 percent, but cooks, institution and cafeteria in this industry are projected to decrease by 8.9 percent as more schools outsource their food services operations in the future. Conversely, employment of occupational therapists in local elementary and secondary schools is projected to grow by 16.5 between 2014 and 2024, faster than growth in the industry as a whole, because the share of children with illnesses and disorders that require the expertise of occupational therapists is expected to increase.
Education and training. BLS economists assign categories for typical education needed for entry, typical on-the-job training needed to attain competency in the occupation, and work experience in a related occupation to each detailed occupation in the National Employment Matrix. Assignments are based on analyses of qualitative and quantitative information.7
Occupation tables in this article include education category assignments for each occupation. Education assignments describe the typical level of education that most workers need to enter an occupation. The education categories BLS assigns to occupations are
· doctoral or professional degree;
· master’s degree;
· bachelor’s degree;
· associate’s degree;
· postsecondary nondegree award;
· some college, no degree;
· high school diploma or equivalent; and
· no formal educational credential.
Wage data. The wage data cited in this article are estimates of median annual wages in May 2014, as reported by the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) survey. The median annual wage is the wage at which half of all workers earned more and half earned less. The median annual wage for all workers in May 2014 was $35,540. Median annual wages allow users to compare the earnings potential among occupations and occupational groups.
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