An evaluation of State projections of industry, occupational employment, (EXCERPT), Monthly Labor Review Online, October 1987

An evaluation of State projections
of industry, occupational employment

Harvey A. Goldstein and Alvin M. Cruze

State Employment Security Agencies develop and publish statewide and substate industry and occupational employment projections to help meet the information needs of planners and administrators in vocational education, Job Training Partnership Act programs, educational counseling, private sector training programs, and government economic development agencies. Almost all States now use the Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) program of the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the development of their projections. The methodological core of the Bureau program is the industry-occupational (or staffing pattern) matrix produced for each State from the results of the OES survey and other supplementary data.

Because data from the OES survey first became available in 1976, the State agencies had their first opportunity to develop projections using the OES results for the 1976-82 projection round. This article summarizes the results of an evaluation of the accuracy of those projections for 20 States.¹ Based on the evaluation results, we provide some recommendations to improve subsequent rounds of statewide projections.

This excerpt is from an article published in the October 1987 issue of the Monthly Labor Review. The full text of the article is available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF). See How to view a PDF file for more information.

Read abstract Download full article in PDF (993K)

Footnotes

1 The industry employment projections were evaluated for the following 20 jurisdictions: Alabama, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia. Other portions of the analysis are limited to selected subsets of these jurisdictions because of data availability or other technical reasons.

Occupational Employment Statistics

Within Monthly Labor Review Online:
Welcome | Current Issue | Index | Subscribe | Archives

Exit Monthly Labor Review Online:
BLS Home | Publications & Research Papers