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The 2006-16 job outlook in brief.

Article Excerpt
The population grows and ages, technology advances, and businesses find new ways to compete. Trends like these affect the future job market. And understanding such trends can give you an edge when planning your career.

The Occupational Outlook Handbook--published every 2 years by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)--features projections of long-term job growth and employment prospects for 270 occupations. This special issue of the Occupational Outlook Quarterly (OOQ) includes a table summarizing that information so readers can compare occupations at a glance.

The next few pages will help you get the most out of that table. Read on to learn what BLS projections mean, why employment is changing, and how BLS makes its projections.

Understanding employment projections

BLS projections give a broad overview of future employment conditions: They show total growth over the entire 2006-16 decade, but they do not account for variation from one year to another. Also, the projections are for the entire country. Because conditions vary significantly by location, jobseekers should supplement this general analysis with more specific information from State workforce agencies and career counselors. (See, for example, www.careeronestop.org.)

BLS projections show expected job growth and decline in various occupations. Usually, occupations that are gaining jobs offer more opportunities for workers than other occupations do. Each job that is added to a growing occupation equals an opening for a worker trying to enter that occupation.

But job growth tells only part of the story. Opportunities in any occupation are also...

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