Personality and Career: The “Bipolar” Occupations

Let me begin by explaining that in the title to this blog, I am not using the term “bipolar” in its clinical sense. That is, I’m not referring to people who have alternating periods of manic and depression. Instead, I’m using the term to refer to those occupations linked to personality types that are considered polar opposites. It’s interesting to consider why some occupations can bridge these divides.

The personality taxonomy on which I’m basing this analysis is the hexagon of types described by John S. Holland. Holland’s hexagonal scheme is based on the idea that certain personality types are similar and more likely to be shared by people and by occupations (adjacent angles on the hexagon), whereas others are more distinct (opposite angles). The O*NET database follows Holland’s practice of assigning occupations to one primary personality type and one or two secondary types—in other words, positioning them between two angles of the hexagon rather than at just one angle.

I thought it would be interesting to look at occupations in the O*NET database for which the primary type and the first secondary type are at opposite ends of the hexagon. In other words, they should appeal to people who have interests and other preferences that are supposed to overlap only rarely. (Maybe you are one of these people.)

By far the largest group of these “bipolar” occupations consists of those that combine the Realistic and Social personality types. In case you need to be reminded of how these types are defined, Realistic personalities prefer hands-on work, whereas Social personality types prefer work that helps other people. These RS and SR occupations consist mainly of health-care careers. Here are a few:

Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (RSI)

Anesthesiologist Assistants (RSI)

Radiologic Technologists (RS)

Surgical Technologists (RSC)

Radiation Therapists (SRC)

Acupuncturists (SRI)

Dental Hygienists (SRC)

Respiratory Therapy Technicians (SRI)

Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses (SR)

Orthotists and Prosthetists (SRI)

Athletic Trainers (SRI)

Midwives (SR)

Home Health Aides (SR)

Psychiatric Aides (SRC)

Occupational Therapy Assistants (SR)

When you read stories about the projected shortage of health-care workers, especially for hands-on roles, understand that the most important reason is the expected demand caused by an aging population. But perhaps a secondary reason is a shortage of supply that happens because it is difficult to find workers who enjoy the combination of hands-on work and caring for others.

Not all of the RS and SR occupations are in health care. Some of the RS occupations are in protective services in roles where they do hands-on work—for example, Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers (RS), Municipal Firefighters (RSE), Forest Firefighters (RS), and Animal Control Workers (RSC). The SR occupations not concerned with health care are an odd mixture such as Park Naturalists (SRA), Coaches and Scouts (SRE), and Food Servers, Nonrestaurant (SRE).

The Investigative personality type (solving problems mentally) and the Enterprising type (leading and persuading) overlap mostly in a group of IE occupations that use quantitative methods to solve business problems:

Management Analysts (IEC)

Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists (IEC)

Business Intelligence Analysts (IEC)

Industrial Ecologists (IE)

Environmental Economists (IEC)

Industrial-Organizational Psychologists (IEA)

Urban and Regional Planners (IEA)

Whereas the SR occupations employ very large (and increasing) numbers of workers, the IE occupations are both fewer in number and tend to have smaller workforces. They also tend to earn much higher pay because they demand a high level of academically-acquired skills and operate in business settings.

Some of the EI occupations are similar: Business Continuity Planners (EIC), Sustainability Specialists (EIA), Fraud Examiners, Investigators and Analysts (EIC), and Search Marketing Strategists (EIC). I also find two law occupations—Lawyers (EI) and Administrative Law Judges, Adjudicators, and Hearing Officers (EIS)—plus two occupations in inquisitive protective services—Police Detectives (EI) and Criminal Investigators and Special Agents (EI). I’ve long been puzzled by the presence of police and lawyers among the Enterprising occupations, but I suppose it is because of the persuasive aspects of the work.

The last axis within the Holland hexagon runs between the Artistic (creative, independent) and Conventional (systematic, orderly) personality types. It’s interesting to find that there are no AC occupations and only one CA occupation: Proofreaders and Copy Markers (CA). Evidently it is extremely difficult to find work that combines the unstructured setting of the Artistic type with the structured setting of the Conventional type.

However, the approach I used for this blog—looking for occupations with primary and secondary types at opposite poles—is only one way to look at the relationships between pairs of Holland types. Another way is to do statistical analysis—specifically, to find the correlations between the ratings of occupations on the various types. In next week’s blog, I’ll look at the hexagon through this lens.

Deal-Making Careers

Recently I was speaking with a cousin who is contemplating a career change after working in the same industry for more than 30 years. I suggested to him that in choosing a new direction, he might want to leverage the enormous fund of knowledge and contacts he has acquired in his work. Why throw all that away?

This is the central idea of my book The Sequel, in which I look at various ways to make a mid-career occupational change without starting from scratch. One of the sequel careers that I discuss is brokering.

A lot of buying and selling goes on in every industry. People who have a lot of work experience in an industry usually are well informed about how these deals get made. They know who the main sellers are, what they have to offer, how much they’re likely to ask in payment, and what makes the difference between and good deal and a bad one. They also know about the buyers: where they come from, what they’re looking for, what they’re able to pay, and what makes the difference between a good customer and a bad one. Old industry hands may also know about arrangements besides price that are commonly involved in the deal, such as warrantees and common modes of delivery.

People with these kinds of knowledge may be able to make a career of bringing buyers and sellers together and earning a commission on the sales. That is what brokers do.

Brokers act as matchmakers. For example, a freight broker finds a business that needs to ship some kind of cargo and matches it with a carrier that can provide the appropriate kind of shipping service at an acceptable price. The freight broker never takes possession of the cargo and merely arranges the deal. The company producing the cargo appreciates the broker’s ability to quickly identify a reliable and low-priced shipper. The shipper appreciates the added business, which may result in more trucks plying their routes with full loads.

Brokers often advise and inform buyers to help them make a wise choice and understand the necessary paperwork. For example, a mortgage broker may counsel a borrower on how to correct a situation that harms the borrower’s credit rating or may explain the pros and cons of different loan arrangements. An energy broker may explain to a commercial client the benefits and risks of entering a contract with an electric company that locks in a specific rate for electric power for a year.

Some brokers facilitate the sale of a division within a business or even the entire business. Working with a broker in a confidential arrangement keeps news of the planned sale off the street so customers of the business do not lose confidence in it.

Brokers spend much of their time making decisions. The decisions need to be correct and can have a large impact. The pressure of time and competition can add to the stress of this work. Although brokers have a lot of independence, the context in which they make their decisions tends to be structured and even repetitious. Brokering provides the satisfaction of helping clients achieve their goals. This can be especially rewarding when people can live better lives by achieving goals such as a college degree or the purchase of a home.

Here are some occupations that act as brokers:

• Agents and Business Managers of Artists, Performers, and Athletes
• Cargo and Freight Agents
• Customs Brokers
• Energy Brokers
• Insurance Sales Agents
• Investment Underwriters
• Loan Officers
• Purchasing Agents and Buyers, Farm Products
• Purchasing Agents, Except Wholesale, Retail, and Farm Products
• Real Estate Brokers
• Sales Agents, Financial Services
• Securities and Commodities Traders

Besides knowledge of an industry, brokers often need to carry insurance to protect their clients from loss. Sometimes they are also required to be bonded, an additional expense when you set up a brokerage.

Knowledge of applicable laws is important in many industries, so it may be necessary for you to take one or more classes to become fully informed and, in many cases, prepare for a licensure exam. (A college degree is rarely necessary, although it can be helpful.) The license assures clients that you know the laws and may also indicate that you possess appropriate insurance. In some industries, a criminal background check is a common requirement. Because there is so much variation, you should check the requirements for your industry and state.

Transportation brokers need to register with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.

In many industries, a common entry route is to work first as an agent on the staff of a brokerage. Agents usually are not required to carry the level of responsibility, including legal liability, that a broker carries. Licensing and insurance requirements tend to be much lower. Real estate brokers usually begin as sales agents. In fact, work experience in sales is a requirement for a real estate broker’s license, although in some states it is waived for those with a bachelor’s degree in real estate.

It’s easier to set up a brokerage business in some industries, such as the highly regulated insurance industry, than in others where a few major players dominate.

The Pros and Cons of Federal Jobs

In response to this week’s shutdown of the federal government, I thought it would be a good time to look at the advantages and disadvantages of working for this employer.

Compared to jobs in the private sector, jobs with the federal government have many advantages:

• Federal jobs tend to be more secure. When agencies need to reduce their size, they usually do so by attrition (that is, not replacing people who leave). Employees can challenge termination or other personnel decisions through a formal appeals process.
• Hiring and promotion in federal jobs are guided by a stronger commitment to diversity and inclusion than you’ll find in most private-sector worksites.
• Federal jobs offer a wider selection of health-insurance plans than do private-sector employers. Retirees can continue their health-insurance coverage for the same fee they paid while working.
• Federal jobs offer better retirement benefits than many jobs in the private sector.
• Federal jobs offer 10 holidays per year.
• Federal jobs offer 13 vacation days per year to beginning workers, 20 days after 3 years, and 26 days after 15 years. To this, add 13 days of sick leave per year.
• Federal jobs often permit flexible work arrangements. For example, you may be able to work four 10-hour days per week or do some work from home. Workers are rarely required to work more than 40 hours. This can make a huge difference in some fields, such as law and accounting.
• High-quality day care for children is often available at federal job sites or sometimes is subsidized at off-site centers.
• Federal jobs can give you the satisfaction of serving the nation.

Federal employment is not a worker’s paradise, however:

• Competition for some federal jobs is intense.
• Contrary to what you may have heard about the growth of the federal workforce, it is not a fast-growing field. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the federal workforce will shrink by 12.5 percent from 2010 to 2020, compared to 14.3 growth percent for all industries. If you don’t count Postal Service jobs, the federal workforce shrinks by “only” 8.2 percent, but that still compares quite poorly to the average across all career fields.
• A few federal jobs require security clearance, which may require background investigations that can drag on for months.
• The workplace structure tends to be more bureaucratic than in small private-sector businesses. In high-tech jobs, the workplace may be slower to adopt the newest technologies.
• Sometimes political pressures prevent workers from doing their jobs as they see fit.
• Although the many rules are designed to promote fairness, some workers find ways to manipulate the rules to gain an advantage.

What about pay? The answer depends on how you analyze the data. Federal workers earn more than private-sector workers, but they also are better educated. Most individual federal workers would earn more in an equivalent private-sector job. On the other hand, federal pay is extremely fair. In many private-sector jobs, you have to negotiate your salary and don’t know what other workers’ salaries are based on. The pay for federal jobs is supposed to be comparable to what is current in the private sector, with adjustments for local cost of living, and it is based on your salary grade.

The high level of competition for federal jobs, though listed here as a disadvantage, is an indication that work for the federal government is, on balance, very rewarding (when it’s not shut down by political blackmail).

You can read details about specific federal jobs in my book 150 Best Federal Jobs (JIST).

Are You a City Mouse or a Country Mouse?

If you’re making career plans, you may have a definite preference for the urban lifestyle or the rural lifestyle. Some people prefer the diversity, lively cultural scene, public transportation, really good restaurants, and fast pace of city life. Others would rather enjoy the big horizons, closeness to nature, traditional values, quiet, and slow pace of rural life.

If you have already made your choice of a career goal, you may have already settled this issue. Some careers, such as those in the performing arts, are very difficult to sustain in a rural area. On the other hand, many occupations in agriculture and mining require the open countryside that is scarce in urban areas.

But let’s assume that you have not yet made your career choice. One factor to consider is that, all things being equal, there tend to be more job openings in urban areas simply because there are so many businesses. Of course, you also face more competition in cities because there are so many workers with skills like yours. Another two-edged sword is the higher pay that urban jobs usually command; this may be offset by the higher cost of living (especially for housing and locally provided services) in urban areas.

So I’m not going to try to influence your thinking on this issue. I’ll assume that you have a definite preference for either urban or rural living but have not yet settled on a career goal, either as a first occupation or as a midcareer shift. So let me show to you which occupations have a high concentration in either urban or rural settings, and maybe you can find one that matches your skills and not just your preferences for location.

To calculate the urban percentage for each occupation for which I could get information, I identified the 38 largest metropolitan areas out of all 380 metro areas for which the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports workforce size (in the Occupational Employment Statistics data). For each occupation, I summed the number of workers employed in these 38 metro areas and then divided it by the total number of workers in that same occupation throughout the United States.

For the following list, I set the cutoff for this urban percentage at 70. In other words, this list shows those occupations for which at least 70 percent of the workers are employed in the largest cities. The occupations are ordered to put those with the highest urban percentage at the top of the list.

Occupation                                                                   Urban Percentage

Fashion Designers                                                     85%

Agents and Business Managers of Artists, Performers, and Athletes   82%

Parking Lot Attendants                                               80%

Film and Video Editors                                               79%

Media and Communication Workers, All Other     78%

Art Directors                                                                  78%

Political Scientists                                                       75%

Sound Engineering Technicians                              74%

Multimedia Artists and Animators                            74%

Software Developers, Applications                          74%

Producers and Directors                                            74%

Economists                                                                  73%

Financial Analysts                                                       72%

Sales Engineers                                                          72%

Securities, Commodities, and Financial Services Sales Agents            72%

Brokerage Clerks                                                        72%

Medical Scientists, Except Epidemiologists          72%

Manicurists and Pedicurists                                      71%

Software Developers, Systems Software               71%

Marketing Managers                                                   71%

Writers and Authors                                                    71%

Actors                                                                             71%

Computer Network Architects                                   70%

Information Security Analysts                                    70%

Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists               70%

Computer and Information Systems Managers    70%

Baggage Porters and Bellhops                                70%

To calculate the rural percentage for occupations, I used a procedure similar to what I used for the urban percentage. However, instead of using workforce figures that applied to metropolitan areas, I used figures for the 172 nonmetropolitan areas for which the BLS reports occupational earnings. These nonmetro areas are regions such as east central Pennsylvania, the Low Country of South Carolina, coastal Oregon, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

In the following list, the cutoff percentage is 25, which means that at least 25 percent of the workforce of each occupation is employed in the 172 nonmetropolitan areas. The occupations with the highest rural percentages are at the top of the list.

Occupation                                                                   Rural Percentage

Mine Shuttle Car Operators                                       71%

Roof Bolters, Mining                                                    66%

Logging Equipment Operators                                 63%

Postmasters and Mail Superintendents                 53%

Forest and Conservation Technicians                    51%

Roustabouts, Oil and Gas                                         51%

Farm Equipment Mechanics and Service Technicians             47%

Sawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Wood        45%

Loading Machine Operators, Underground Mining    43%

Service Unit Operators, Oil, Gas, and Mining         40%

Continuous Mining Machine Operators                  40%

Wellhead Pumpers                                                     40%

Slaughterers and Meat Packers                               40%

Highway Maintenance Workers                                39%

Helpers--Extraction Workers                                     39%

Rotary Drill Operators, Oil and Gas                         38%

Log Graders and Scalers                                          38%

Woodworking Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Except Sawing            35%

Legislators                                                                    35%

Textile Winding, Twisting, and Drawing Out Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders    34%

Agricultural Equipment Operators                            33%

Meat, Poultry, and Fish Cutters and Trimmers      33%

Farmworkers, Farm, Ranch, and Aquacultural Animals           32%

Explosives Workers, Ordnance Handling Experts, and Blasters            31%

Derrick Operators, Oil and Gas                                29%

Correctional Officers and Jailers                              28%

Textile Knitting and Weaving Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders               28%

Water and Wastewater Treatment Plant and System Operators             28%

Electrical Power-Line Installers and Repairers    27%

Operating Engineers and Other Construction Equipment Operators    27%

Fallers                                                                            26%

Furnace, Kiln, Oven, Drier, and Kettle Operators and Tenders                26%

Foresters                                                                       25%

Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers              25%

Mine Cutting and Channeling Machine Operators     25%

First-Line Supervisors of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers        25%

Excavating and Loading Machine and Dragline Operators      25%

Racial Disparity in Earnings

Today, even as I am writing this, people are gathered on the Mall in Washington, DC, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the march on Washington at which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his most famous speech. It’s useful to remember that the actual name of that event was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. I thought this would be a good occasion to take a look at the employment situation of African American workers.

Figures on unemployment are relatively easy to obtain. For example, you can quickly find that 13.8 percent of the African American population in the labor force is unemployed, compared to 7.2 percent in the White population. (These are actually 2012 figures.)

What I thought would be more interesting would be to look at the racial mix of various occupations and see the impact on earnings. Recently, I have been doing a lot of analysis using correlations, so I decided to see how racial presence in occupations is correlated with median earnings in those occupations. Understand that correlation is not the same as causation, but it indicates that two things are happening together, for whatever reason. In this case, I was trying to determine whether concentration of any race tends to happen together with the level of median earnings.

What I found was not surprising but also not pleasant to contemplate. The correlation between percentage of African American workers in occupations and median income in those same occupations was –0.37. If you’re not familiar with correlation, let me explain what this negative correlation means: To some extent (specifically, 37 on a scale of 0 to 100), the greater the percentage of African Americans working in an occupation, the lower the median income of that occupation is likely to be. For Hispanic/Latino workers, the negative correlation is actually even greater: –0.48.

For Whites and Asians, however, the correlations are positive: 0.24 for Asians and 0.43 for Whites.

Note that this simple analysis masks a lot of information. It does not tell us what positions the workers of each races are holding within the occupations. It also does not tell us the full-time or part-time status of the workers. (Actually, a slightly higher percentage of White workers are part-timers.) It does not include earnings of self-employed workers. It does not account for loss of earnings among those who are counted in an occupation but who currently are unemployed. For actual earnings comparisons, a better indicator might be that full-time African American male workers are currently earning 75.3 percent of the earnings of White male workers. For women, the figure is 85.0 percent. These actual earnings comparisons are consistent with what I found about tendencies in occupations.

These statistics are one more indication that we do not yet live in a postracial society. Understand that the solution to this situation is not simply a matter of achieving colorblindness in hiring, although that certainly would help and is something we have not yet achieved. In an experiment described in a paper (PDF) called “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?,” resumes were randomly assigned African American– or White-sounding names and sent to employers in the Chicago and Boston areas. The resumes with White-sounding names resulted in 50 percent more callbacks for interviews.

Even if hiring were not biased, the career prospects of African Americans are damaged by a justice system that stops, arrests, and imprisons African Americans at a much higher rate than Whites, even for offenses that are known to be committed at equal rates. Imprisoning people not only puts a stain on the convict’s record that reduces employability but, especially for young people, breaks up families and thus damages the prospects of the next generation.

I am not blind to the advances in racial justice that have been made over the past 50 years. But our nation has a lot further to go to realize Dr. King’s dream, and doing so will take positive action, not passive waiting around for change to occur.

Changes in Skill-Income Payoff Over 10 Years

Everybody knows that a high level of skills is associated with high earnings, but perhaps you have been wondering which skills have the highest payoff. I actually answered that question just about a year ago in a blog that I wrote called “Transferable Skills with the Biggest Payoff.”  When I did the research for that blog, I wanted to use a statistical approach to seeing which skills are linked to the highest earnings, so I computed the correlations between the skill ratings of occupations and their median income. In the blog, you can see that Judgment and Decision Making, Complex Problem Solving, and Active Learning were the transferable skills with the highest payoff.

Now, a year later, I have been thinking about career trends and decided it would be useful to see whether these correlations changed over time. So I ran correlations again, using 2002 and 2012 earnings data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. If you want to understand how I calculated correlations, as well as the significance of correlations as a technique, I suggest you look at the earlier blog.

As you might expect, the payoff for some skills increased over that ten-year span and decreased for others. Even the largest differences were not very big: the correlation of one skill gained by .06. Keep in mind that correlations are computed on a scale in which 1.0 means total correlation. You may think of the numbers as equivalent to percentages, which means that the biggest gain in correlation was equivalent to 6 percent.

So here are the skills that gained the most from 2002 to 2012, which is to say that their connection to earnings increased the most:

	2002 Correlation	2012 Correlation	Gain
Technology Design	0.34	0.40	0.06
Management of Material Resources	0.41	0.45	0.05
Management of Financial Resources	0.46	0.50	0.04
Installation	-0.08	-0.05	0.04
Management of Personnel Resources	0.57	0.60	0.03

I find it really interesting that three of these skills are managerial. What I take away from this is that compensation for management has probably been increasing over the last decade relative to compensation for other occupations.

I’m not surprised to see Technology Design posted the largest gains. Here’s how this skill is defined: “Generating or adapting equipment and technology to serve user needs.” It is well known that technology jobs are in high demand, but this skill is about practical uses of technology rather than scientific principles. The increasing correlation of this skill with earnings gives reinforcement to the idea that what increasingly drives the U.S. economy is innovation in applications of technology—think of the iPhone, for example.

I’m intrigued by the large gain for Installation. You’ll notice that the correlation is still in negative territory, which means that the more of this skill you use, the lower your earnings are likely to be. However, over the past decade the correlation got .04 closer to zero, which means that having this skill as an important part of your work has become less of an income liability. Perhaps the occupations with a heavy emphasis on installation are becoming better compensated as the level of technology that they use increases. In other words, as technology becomes simultaneously more complex and more important in everyone’s lives, it is becoming increasingly necessary to pay good wages to people who can install the sophisticated software and hardware that we use constantly.

Only four skills had lower correlations to earnings in 2012 than in 2002, meaning that there is less of a payoff now than there was then. These are the four:

	2002 Correlation	2012 Correlation	Loss
Repairing	-0.18	-0.19	-0.02
Operation and Control	-0.18	-0.19	-0.02
Equipment Maintenance	-0.19	-0.20	-0.01
Science	0.58	0.57	-0.01

Note that three of the four have negative correlations, meaning that they already were associated more with low earnings than with high earnings and only got more so. These three skills—Repairing, Operation and Control, and Equipment Maintenance—are characteristic of rust-belt occupations that are being replaced by robots and foreign workers.

I was quite surprised, however, to see that Science had lost ground. The contrast with the performance of Technology Design is instructive and tells me that applied scientific knowledge has gained in earnings even while abstract scientific knowledge has lost slightly. It is consistent with the disappointing national trend toward diminished funding for basic scientific research and reminds me of how a member of my family recently quit her job in medical research and became a software developer. I looked at how the correlation for Science changed on a year-by-year basis and found that it actually climbed during the first half of the decade, peaking in 2008, and then began its downward slide. This suggests that the Great Recession brought on the comparative decrease in pay for scientific research jobs.

It’s important to understand that none of the nine skills I focus on in this blog is among those with particularly high correlations with income. The movement you see here happened in the middle and bottom of the pack. If income is very important to you, I suggest you look at the earlier blog and aim at occupations that involve Judgment and Decision Making, Complex Problem Solving, Active Learning, and other skills with the highest correlations.

Another Take on Careers: Industries

In the 30-plus years that I have been writing about careers, I have focused mostly on occupations and, to a lesser extent, on college majors. But lately I have achieved a new appreciation for the value of considering careers from the viewpoint of industries. If you are thinking about a career move, you may want to think about industries and consult the sources I have found useful.

One reason that I have directed most of my attention to occupations is that this is where a great wealth of information is to be found. Resources such as the O*NET database, the Occupational Outlook Handbook, the Occupational Employment Statistics wage estimates, and the FedScope database of government jobs all present information in terms of occupations and offer valuable information about career options.

Of course, part of a career decision is learning how to prepare for a career move, and the preparation pathway to many occupations runs through a college degree. As a result, I have also researched college majors for many of my books. Not as many information resources are available for college majors as for occupations—I have relied on college catalogues and the National Survey of College Graduates—and these require a lot of analysis to yield useful facts.

By comparison, I have written very little about industries and done much less research in that field until this summer, when I undertook a project for Vault.com to write descriptions of 19 industries, such as Architecture, Animation, Elder Care, and Wholesale. If you have noticed that my blogs have been appearing less frequently of late, it was because my work schedule on this project has kept me very busy. But let me share some of what I have learned.

(If the following looks too tedious to you, go directly to Vault, where the most relevant of this information is distilled.)

One of the most valuable resources for learning about industries is the Census Bureau’s Industry Statistics Sampler pages. On the main page, click on an industry sector and drill down to the particular one that interests you. For example, if you’re interested in the software publishing industry, click the "More" arrow next to 51 Information. (The 51 is a classification number from the North American Industry Classification System [NAICS], the taxonomy that the government uses to classify all industries.) This takes you to the Industry Statistics Sampler for the Information industry. Like all two-digit industries in NAICS, it is a very large group, but you’ll find a tab called 2007 Census: Employers & Nonemployers. Click this, and you’ll see a table of information that covers not only the two-digit industry Information, but also all the three-digit, more-detailed industries within Information.

Click on 511 Publishing Industries (except Internet), and you’ll drill down to the Industry Statistics Sampler for that more-detailed industry. Once again, the tab called 2007 Census: Employers & Nonemployers will lead you to a table, this time covering all the four-digit industry sectors of the publishing industry. One of these is 5112 Software publishers. Click this, and you’ll finally get down to the Industry Statistics Sampler with the very specific level of detail for that industry sector. Click on the various tabs to retrieve tables with information such as the number of establishments, the dollar volume of sales, the payroll, the number of paid employees, and historical data on these topics. The last of these may be most interesting to you because it indicates trends. Try playing with the figures—for example, seeing whether the average number of workers per establishment has gone up or down.

The tab called 2007 Economic Census: Links to AFF (i.e., American Fact Finder) leads to links that can retrieve some very informative tables. For example, you can find where firms are clustered geographically or how business is divided among the various size firms—for example, whether industry sales are dominated by a few very big players.

The tab called 2007 Economic Census: Product Lines provides helpful information about the mix of products the industry outputs, both as dollar figures and percentages.

Turning away from the Census pages, another very useful database of information about industries is the National Employment Matrix of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which can tell you what growth is projected for the workforce of the industry. The figures tell not only what growth to expect for the industry as a whole but also for individual occupations within the industry. These occupational projections can differ markedly; for example, the outlook for Accountants and Auditors in nursing care facilities is 11.7 percent growth, compared to –21.7 percent in newspaper publishing.

Another database within BLS is the Occupational Employment Statistics survey, which despite the name does have figures for industries. Go to the May 2012 National Industry-Specific Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates page and drill down to the specific industry that interest you. This tells you not only what the wages are across the whole industry and for individual occupations within it, but also how many people from each occupation are employed in the industry.

Information like this might help you decide what specialization to pursue within an occupation. It might guide your selection of a minor in college or which employers you focus on in your job search.

My final recommendation for researching industries is to turn to industry associations. Search the Web for “[name of industry] association” and you are likely to uncover one or several groups that represent the field. Understand that these groups are in business mostly to promote the industry, and they usually are eager for you to become a dues-paying member or take one of their certification courses. In fact, some industry association websites do little else but offer these options. On the other hand, many industry association websites feature news and even career tips about the industry. Filter the information through your critical thinking skills, recognizing that the industry representatives may be projecting a biased viewpoint. If more than one group represents the industry, you probably should compare their differing takes on the industry and its environment.