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Handbook of Methods Employment Projections Presentation

Employment Projections: Presentation

The main products of the Employment Projections (EP) program are released on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) website annually and in the Monthly Labor Review (MLR), Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH), and Career Outlook. In addition, the BLS website provides projected data of the labor force, aggregate economy, final demand, industry output, industry employment, and occupational employment. The MLR typically includes an examination of the assumptions and results for technical data users. The OOH contains extensive information about hundreds of occupations. In addition to presenting outlook data for each occupation, this publication includes information on the nature of the work, education and training requirements, working conditions, and wages. The OOH is used as a primary source of information for people choosing a career. Career Outlook publishes articles related to career preparation topics such as occupational profiles, job seeking information, and understanding wage and benefits data.

All EP publications can be accessed at https://www.bls.gov/emp/publications.htm.

EP data tables can be accessed at https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables.htm.

The EP searchable database on industry and occupational employment can be accessed a at https://www.bls.gov/emp/data.htm.

The EP program produces point estimates of projected employment levels and growth rates. Unlike with BLS survey data, projections data do not have measures of uncertainty like relative standard errors (RSEs) or variances that capture sampling error. However, projections data will differ from actual values based on how well the assumptions and modeled relationships hold over the projection period. Because error in assumptions at earlier steps of the projections process will result in correlated errors in final occupation and industry employment data, users may benefit from a comparative or ordinal analysis of the data. To support this, the EP program produces top lists of fastest growing occupations and industries.