Technical Note
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes projections for the labor force, the
macroeconomy, industry output and employment, and occupational employment. More information
is available online:
--Labor force: www.bls.gov/emp/data/labor-force.htm
--Aggregate economy: www.bls.gov/emp/data/aggregate-economy.htm
--Industry output and employment: www.bls.gov/emp/data/industry-out-and-emp.htm
--Occupational employment: 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 output and 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 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. (For
previous sets of projections data, visit the Projections Archive page online at
www.bls.gov/emp/data/projections-archive.htm.) 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 gross domestic product (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, 10 years in the future is
impossible to predict with precision. As a result, BLS releases new projections annually to
incorporate new data, research, and analysis. For more details on how BLS assesses and
incorporates AI's potential labor market impacts on its employment projections, illustrated
via case studies from the 2023-33 projections cycle, see Christine Machovec, Michael J.
Rieley, and Emily Rolen, "Incorporating AI impacts in BLS employment projections: occupational
case studies," Monthly Labor Review, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, February 2025.
The historical record shows that technology impacts occupations, but that these changes tend
to be gradual, not sudden. Occupations involve 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 Handbook of Methods page online at
www.bls.gov/opub/hom/emp/home.htm.
Frequently asked questions about the employment projections are online at
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 at the state level are prepared by each
state, using input from the BLS national projections. State projections data are available on
the Projections Central page at https://projectionscentral.org.
United States Department of Labor
