Job Forecast Outlook Interesting Yet Misleading

By: T. Cahill

Washington, D.C. (May 8th) – The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has set its predictions on the 10 occupations it believes will have the fastest job potential growth. Their forecast covers 2008 to 2018. Listed from most open field to the number ten spot, the Bureau forecasts the number one field to be biomedical engineers, followed by network systems and data communication analysts, home health aides, personal and home care aides, financial examiners, medical scientists with the exception of epidemiologists, physician assistants, skin care specialists, biochemists and biophysicists, and athletic trainers.

Taken at face value, these occupations look particularly promising. However, with the current record number of unemployed, many currently holding degrees within these fields, the prediction for example that network systems and data communication analysts will increase by 53 percent and create an additional 155,800 jobs is misleading. There may well already exist 155,800 potential people who could easily fill these positions if and when hiring picks up.

The label “number of new jobs to be created”, replaced to read the “number of jobs that could be re-filled by the current unemployed yet ready to work” is more accurate. The released data, starting from 2008, appears to be seriously out of touch with reality and current unemployment conditions.

To their credit, the Bureau of Labor Statistics does have a disclaimer of sorts on their Overview of the 2008-18 Projections web page. It reads, “The 2008-18 projections assume a full-employment economy in 2018. The impact of the recent recession, which began in December of 2007, on long-term structural changes in the economy will not be fully known until some point during or after the recovery. Because the 2008 starting point is a recession year, the projected growth to an assumed full-employment economy in 2018 will generally be stronger than if the starting point were not a recession year.”

Posted by on May 8, 2010. Filed under economy,National News,Opinion Editorial. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.