November 9, 1998 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
New occupations emerging across
industry lines
Many emerging occupations—defined as
those that are becoming "numerically important or emerging due to technological
change"—are specific to the new or emerging industries they are born to. For
example, resettlement coordinators are not often found outside of their social service
niche, nor are bus aides found outside of educational services. However, there are some
occupations that emerged in a fairly wide range of industries during 1996.
[Chart data—TXT]
The occupation with the most cross-industry coverage was administrative
assistant, identified as emerging in 8 of the 10 major industry divisions. While this job
title is hardly new, today’s administrative assistants are more likely to provide
paraprofessional support to executive staff or to take on budgeting and other office
management functions than to be filing, typing, or answering the telephone.
An occupation that has emerged in a surprisingly wide variety of industries—5 of
the 9 major divisions—is convention manager. Convention managers coordinate the
activities of convention center, hotel, and banquet personnel in order to make
arrangements for group meetings and conventions. Among detailed industries, this
occupation was reported often in membership organizations, business services, educational
services, publishing, and social services.
Emerging occupations are identified by the Occupational
Employment Statistics (OES) program. Employers are asked to provide a
job title and description for the "all other" occupations that they believe are
emerging, as defined above. OES staff reviews reports and determines which occupations are
to be identified by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as emerging. Additional information is
reported in Issues in Labor
Statistics: New Occupations Emerging Across Industry Lines, Summary
98-11. Detailed data are available from "Occupational Employment and Wages,
1996," Bulletin 2506, August 1998.
Of interest
Spotlight on Statistics: National Hispanic Heritage Month
In this Spotlight, we take a look at the Hispanic labor force—including labor force participation, employment and unemployment, educational attainment, geographic location, country of birth, earnings, consumer expenditures, time use, workplace injuries, and employment projections.
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Read more »