Technical Note
BLS publishes projections for the labor force, the macroeconomy, industry output and employment,
and occupational employment. More information is available online:
--Labor force: https://www.bls.gov/emp/data/labor-force.htm
--Aggregate economy: https://www.bls.gov/emp/data/aggregate-economy.htm
--Industry output and employment: https://www.bls.gov/emp/data/industry-out-and-emp.htm
--Occupational employment: https://www.bls.gov/emp/data/occupational-data.htm
The projections data provide a potential scenario for changes in the economy over a decade. The
projections focus on long-term structural trends of the economy and do not try to anticipate
future business cycle activity. To meet this objective, specific assumptions are made about the
labor force, macroeconomy, industry employment, and occupational employment. The projections are
not intended to be a forecast of what the future will be but instead are a description of what
would be expected to happen under these specific assumptions and circumstances. When these
assumptions are not realized, actual values will differ from projections.
Labor supply and demand assumptions
BLS projects the labor force (labor supply) as an input into the macroeconomic projections. BLS
also assumes that the economy will be at full employment in the projected year, with the labor
market at equilibrium. That is, employment in the projected year will be roughly equivalent to
the projected labor force minus a level of frictional unemployment (the relationship is not
exact because labor force is a count of people, while employment is a count of jobs, and
individual people can hold more than one job). BLS does not project an overall labor shortage
or surplus because in the BLS projections data framework, labor supply (the labor force) and
labor demand (employment) are linked – a projected increase in labor supply necessarily results
in an increase in employment.
Technological progress assumptions
As with many variables, BLS assumes that labor productivity and technological progress will be
in line with the historical experience. That is, productivity will increase and technology will
progress, but because the BLS method involves analyzing historical relationships in the data and
projecting them forward, the future is assumed to behave comparably to the past. In a future
state where technology advances much more rapidly than it has historically, it is unlikely that
historical relationships would hold, and therefore BLS projection methods are unlikely to yield
reasonable results.
Recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) have raised the prospect that the future
rate of technological progress could be higher than in the past. BLS projection methods could
reflect this in a faster rate of labor productivity growth. This would in turn result in a
higher level of GDP growth (maintaining the BLS full employment assumption). If this higher
rate of productivity growth is uniform across all industries, there is no impact on BLS
employment projections – output is higher, productivity is higher, and employment is the same.
However, a higher aggregate level of productivity growth could also be reflected differentially
in industry productivity. BLS methods could capture this, but BLS has no data on which to base
these differential productivity impacts. BLS therefore chooses to present a scenario with
technological progress in line with historical patterns, which allows the projections to be
grounded by historical data relationships rather than introducing adjustments that would be
highly speculative.
BLS does conduct research on factors that are expected to impact employment, particularly those
which may not be reflected in historical data, such as new technologies. However, BLS generally
applies adjustments based on this research conservatively, where there is convincing evidence
for a change. Developments in AI are proceeding rapidly, and the uncertainty about potential
impacts remains very high. Projections are always uncertain, and the exact impact of
developments such as new technologies on the labor market ten years out is impossible to predict
with precision. As a result, BLS releases new projections annually to incorporate new data,
research, and analysis.
The historical record does show that technology impacts occupations, but that these changes
tend to be gradual, not sudden. Occupations are complex combinations of tasks, and even when
technology advances rapidly, it can take time for employers and workers to figure out how to
incorporate new technology into business practices. New technologies may change the composition
or weighting of tasks performed by an occupation even if they do not impact overall demand for
an occupation. For more details on the historical record, see Michael J. Handel, "Growth trends
for selected occupations considered at risk from automation," Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics, July 2022.
For more information, visit the Employment Projections Methodology page online at
https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/emp/home.htm.
Frequently asked questions about the employment projections are online at
https://www.bls.gov/emp/frequently-asked-questions.htm.
Users and Uses
The BLS projections are used by high school and college students, their teachers and parents,
jobseekers, career counselors, and guidance specialists to determine jobs in demand. The
projections also are used by state workforce agencies to prepare state and area projections
that, together with the national projections, are widely used by policymakers to make decisions
about education and training, funding allocations, and program offerings. These projections of
jobs in demand help improve the alignment between education and training and the hiring needs
of employers. In addition, other federal agencies, researchers, and academics use the
projections to understand trends in the economy and labor market.
Projections of industry and occupational employment are prepared by each state, using input
from the BLS national projections. State projections data are available at Projections Central
https://www.projectionscentral.org.
United States Department of Labor
