Less than 15 percent of driver and sales workers had a heavy strength requirement in 2023

Driver/sales workers are one of many occupations covered by the Occupational Requirements Survey (ORS). These workers are responsible for driving routes, delivering goods, and potentially taking orders or collecting payment for merchandise. With the latest data release, ORS introduced a new type of estimate, ranges, which expanded data available for driver/sales workers and other occupations. Let’s look at some ORS estimates, including the new range estimates denoted as striped columns or bars, that can help us understand the occupational requirements for workers.

In 2023, 7.8 percent of driver/sales workers had a sedentary strength requirement, 29.8 percent light, and 51.9 percent medium. These are all point estimates, which would have been publishable in the past. With the addition of ranges, heavy and very heavy are now publishable as well. Less than 15 percent of workers had a heavy strength requirement and less than 10 percent had a very heavy strength requirement. Ranges allow for publication of some estimates that would not otherwise be available, supplementing the point estimates in the dataset to provide a more complete picture of occupational requirements.

Specific vocational preparation (SVP) measures the minimum amount of preparation time, including formal education, credentials, prior work experience, and on-the-job training, needed to develop necessary skills for a job. For driver/sales workers, 2.8 percent required only a short demonstration to acquire the needed skills. The majority of these workers, 76.3 percent, required preparation beyond a short demonstration that could take up to 1 month. Another 4.7 percent required preparation time of over 1 month but not more than 3 months. Less than 5 percent of workers fell into each of the two categories that spanned over 3 months to one year of SVP. Those requiring over 1 year of preparation but less than 2 years accounted for 10.2 percent of workers and 2.6 percent needed more than 2 years but less than 4 years. Few driver/sales workers required specific vocational preparation that took over 4 years but not more than 10 years or over 10 years.

These data are from the Occupational Requirements Survey. To learn more, see Occupational Requirements in the United States — 2023 and Range estimates in the ORS dataset.