Winners and Losers in the New Occupational Outlook Handbook

This week I sent in the manuscript of the 2016–2017 edition of the Occupational Outlook Handbook for JIST Career Solutions. Before you can lay your hands on it, the book still needs to go through editing, page layout, printing, and distribution—unless you’re content to peruse it on the website of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Note that the online version lacks some bonus chapters that are available exclusively from JIST.)

Now that I’ve had a chance to look at the contents in detail, I thought it would be interesting to observe the differences between this edition and the one of two years ago. These differences provide insights into important changes in our economy.

One important change is the selection of occupations to be profiled in the OOH. The book has never tried to cover in full detail every occupation in the workforce. Occupations are excluded (apart from a table with a handful of facts) when they have very few workers. So, for example, you will not find a profile of Hearing Aid Specialists, even though it is projected to grow by an impressive 27 percent, because it employs only about 5,900 workers. In some cases, two or more relatively small occupations are lumped together under a single umbrella term. For example, the OOH profile on Police and Detectives actually covers four law-enforcement occupations: Detectives and Criminal Investigators; Fish and Game Wardens; Police and Sheriff’s Patrol Officers; and Transit and Railroad Police.

Therefore, if an occupation gets dropped between one edition and the next, you could reasonably assume that the occupation has shrunk—or is expected to shrink—to the point where it is not significant in the economy.

But some instances surprised me. Among the occupations that have been dropped from the new edition is Printing Workers. This occupation employed 276,000 workers in 2012. By 2014 it had shrunk to 260,700 workers, and it is projected to employ only 223,100 in 2024—but that is still a very large number. Compare that to Podiatrists, which employs only 9,600 in 2004 and is projected to reach only 11,000 by 2024.

Even more surprising was the omission of Maids and Housekeeping Cleaners. This occupation has a huge workforce: 1,457,700 employed in 2014, with 1,569,400 projected for 2024. I think possibly this occupation was dropped because it is associated with one sex only. It might have been lumped together with Janitors in the profile called Janitors and Building Cleaners—but it wasn’t.

Some blue-collar occupations that occupied their own profiles in the previous edition are now lumped together into a single profile. For example, Cement Masons and Terrazzo Workers got lumped together with Brickmasons, Blockmasons, and Stonemasons under the title Masonry Workers. It’s easier to create these big-tent occupations when the work tasks and preparation routes for the component specializations are reasonably similar.

Conversely, some occupations have broken free of a partnership in the previous edition and now have separate profiles of their own. This happened to Athletic Trainers and Exercise Physiologists; Human Resources Specialists and Labor Relations Specialists; and Purchasing Managers, Buyers, and Purchasing Agents. The last of these has been split at the first comma, and it makes sense to separate out the managerial specialization and move it alongside other managerial occupations (such as Sales Managers).

No completely new occupations were added to the current edition in the way that Solar Photovoltaic Installers and Wind Turbine Technicians were added in 2014. Will we see Drone Pilot or Genome Editor in the 2018 edition?

In my next blog, I’ll discuss how the outlook has changed for certain occupations.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics today posted their latest employment-projection figures for the upcoming decade. Here's the table that I find most interesting.

Fastest growing occupations, 2014 and projected 2024 (Numbers in thousands)
2014 National Employment Matrix title	Change, 2014-24		Median annual wage, 2014
	Number	Percent
Total, all occupations	9,788.9	6.5	$35,540
Wind turbine service technicians	4.8	108.0	$48,800
Occupational therapy assistants	14.1	42.7	$56,950
Physical therapist assistants	31.9	40.6	$54,410
Physical therapist aides	19.5	39.0	$24,650
Home health aides	348.4	38.1	$21,380
Commercial divers	1.6	36.9	$45,890
Nurse practitioners	44.7	35.2	$95,350
Physical therapists	71.8	34.0	$82,390
Statisticians	10.1	33.8	$79,990
Ambulance drivers and attendants, except emergency medical technicians	6.5	33.0	$24,080
Occupational therapy aides	2.7	30.6	$26,550
Physician assistants	28.7	30.4	$95,820
Operations research analysts	27.6	30.2	$76,660
Personal financial advisors	73.9	29.6	$81,060
Cartographers and photogrammetrists	3.6	29.3	$60,930
Genetic counselors	0.7	28.8	$67,500
Interpreters and translators	17.5	28.7	$43,590
Audiologists	3.8	28.6	$73,060
Hearing aid specialists	1.6	27.2	$43,010
Optometrists	11.0	27.0	$101,410
Forensic science technicians	3.8	26.6	$55,360
Web developers	39.5	26.6	$63,490
Occupational therapists	30.4	26.5	$78,810
Diagnostic medical sonographers	16.0	26.4	$67,530
Personal care aides	458.1	25.9	$20,440
Phlebotomists	28.1	24.9	$30,670
Ophthalmic medical technicians	9.1	24.7	$35,230
Nurse midwives	1.3	24.6	$96,970
Solar photovoltaic installers	1.4	24.3	$40,020
Emergency medical technicians and paramedics	58.5	24.2	$31,700

Is Marco Rubio Right About Welders and Philosophers?

In the Republican candidates’ debate on the evening of November 10, Senator Marco Rubio argued for the importance of vocational education by stating that “welders earn more than philosophers” and that “we need more welders and less philosophers.” Was he correct?

Let’s consider earnings first. If a philosopher is someone who studies philosophical issues for a living, then the occupation under consideration is mostly pursued by the faculty of colleges and universities. Earnings figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics are available for Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary: The estimate for May of 2014 was a median annual wage of $65,540. If you assume that this average is being pulled up by the religion teachers (which I doubt), you could suggest a somewhat lower figure for the philosophy teachers alone and still have a figure that considerably exceeds the annual earnings of Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers: $36,720.

Some fact-checkers have approached the issue from the understanding that Senator Rubio was speaking about alternative postsecondary options for study, and therefore “philosophers” should be construed to mean people who majored in philosophy, not people working in that field. Using this approach, I could compare the starting wages of philosophy majors ($39,900, as reported by The Wall Street Journal) with the starting wages of welders: probably roughly equivalent to the lowest 10 percent of wage-earners among Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers, which is $24,990, according to the BLS. Or I could look at the mid-career earnings of the philosophy majors—$81,200, according to the WSJ survey—a figure that exceeds even the 90^th percentile earnings of Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers: $57,120. Among both new workers and mid-career earners, the philosophy majors get bigger paychecks.

Note, however, that these are apples-to-oranges comparisons. If I am truly comparing the outcomes of postsecondary programs, I should be comparing the wages of the philosophy grads to the wages of those who graduated from welding programs. Some of the latter are no longer working as welders and have moved on to more lucrative careers such as Construction Managers (with a median of $84,410). The WSJ survey and others of its ilk do not cover welding grads, so a precise comparison is not possible. And those with no formal training beyond welding probably have few opportunities for advancement to high-paying managerial careers. Thus it seems likely that philosophy is the postsecondary program with the bigger payoff.

Now let’s look at the senator’s second assertion: “We need more welders and [fewer] philosophers.”  It’s important to parse this assertion carefully. Did the senator mean we need fewer philosophers than welders? Or did he mean fewer philosophers than we have now?

If he meant the latter, he has raised an issue that is philosophical in its own right. A friend of mine who has a PhD in philosophy reminded me of a quotation from John W. Gardner, once president of the Carnegie Corporation: “The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.”

But let’s assume that the senator meant that there is a greater need for welders than for philosophers. That meaning follows logically from his earlier statement about earnings because getting a paycheck depends on being employed. What are the comparative job prospects for philosophers and welders?

In fact, only about 23,000 people were working as Philosophy and Religion Teachers, Postsecondary, in May 2014. Compare this to more than 350,000 working as Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers. The BLS projects 10,600 job openings for the former occupation between 2012 and 2022, and remember that some of these will be for religion teachers. By contrast, the BLS projects 108,500 job openings for the welders over the same time span. This comparison validates this interpretation of Senator Rubio’s second assertion: We have a greater need for welders.

In the discussion of comparative earnings, I also looked at the figures for philosophy and welding graduates. But for a comparison of employment prospects, hard data simply is not available. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many philosophy grads are working in business, law, clergy, and other fields, although often with additional degrees. Therefore, I would not discourage bright students with the ability to be flexible about their career outcomes from opting for a major in philosophy.

Senator Rubio, however, was talking about government policy rather than the career choices of individuals, and the specific point he was making is that vocational education suffers from a lack of prestige. I agree with him that this is harmful to the future of our economy, and the quotation from John Gardner is quite relevant to this issue. There are already reports of manufacturers who are having trouble finding skilled workers, and the blame is often placed on a widespread disrespect for occupations in the skilled trades.

Perhaps I have parsed Senator Rubio’s words more carefully than is appropriate. Politics, after all, deals with philosophical issues much as a meat cleaver deals with meat. I agree with the senator’s main point, even if it was expressed inelegantly.