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 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 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. (Previous sets of projections data
may be accessed via the Projections Archive: https://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 ten years out 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 does show 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
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
