Overview
Total employment is expected to increase by millions of jobs, but they will not be evenly distributed across major industrial and occupational groups, causing some restructuring of employment. Continued faster-than-average employment growth among occupations that require relatively high levels of education or training is expected.
Among the major occupational groups, employment in professional specialty occupations is projected to increase the fastest, and by the greatest number. This is the only group that is expected to add more jobs over the projections period than were added from 1983 to 1994.
The group with the second fastest growth rate and the second largest number of jobs added is service occupations. Professional specialty occupations and service occupations, which on opposite ends of the educational attainment and earnings spectrum, are expected to provide more than half of total job growth between 1994 and 2005. Executive, administrative, and mamorial occupations; technicians and related support occupations; marketing and sales workers also are expected to have faster average employment growth. Employment in precision projection, craft, and repair occupations; the operators, fabricators, laborers group; and administrative support occupations, including clerical, is expected to increase, but at a slower rate. The number of agriculture, forestry, fishing, and related occupations is projected to decline slightly.
It is especially noteworthy that employment in administrative support occupations, including clerical, is projected to grow only 994,000 workers through 2005, and to fall from first to second place in size behind employment of service workers. Of automation is expected to have a large impact on many of the individual occupations in this group. The projected 1994-2005 of 1.6 million jobs for blue-collar workers-precision product craft, and repair occupations and operators, fabricators, and borers-is substantially less than the 3.1 million gain over the 1994 period. The smaller projected increase reflects the expected impact of technological change on these occupations and the continuing decline in manufacturing employment through 2005.
As a result of the different growth rates among the occupational groups, the structure of total employment is projected to change. Executive, administrative, and managerial occupations; professional specialty occupations; technicians and related support occupations; marketing and sales occupations, service occupations are all projected to increase their shares of total employment. Professional specialty occupations, which registered the largest increase in share in the recent past, is expected to do so again. On the other hand, administrative support occupations, including clerical; agriculture, forestry, fishing, related occupations; precision production, craft, and repair occupations; and operators, fabricators, and laborers are expected decline as a proportion of total employment.
Executive, Administrative, and Managerial Occupations
The number of executive, administrative, and managerial workers is projected to increase by 17 percent.
While managers had the second fastest growth rate among the major occupational groups, they are expected to have only the fifth fastest growth rate. The result will be only a slight increase in the share of total employment represented by these workers.
Part of the reason for the expected slowdown in job growth in this group is the trend toward job restructuring. Although eminent in many different fields may be affected by restructure.
It is especially true in manufacturing, where employment in group is projected to decline.
In industries other than manufacturing, the overall occupation category of executive, administrative, and managerial work is expected to grow substantially. The services industry division is expected to account for more than 6 out of 10 of the additional growth for managers, with large gains registered in engineering and agreement services and in business services. Other industries showing significant projected employment increases for managers are wholesale and retail trade and finance, insurance and real estate.
Professional Specialty Occupations
Employment in professional specialty occupations is projected to grow fast. This group also posted the fastest rate of increase and largest job growth. Professional specialty occupations are expected to experience the largest increase in share of total employment. The largest numerical eases are expected among teachers, librarians, and counselors. Computer engineers, scientists, and systems analysts registered largest job gains.
Employment in professional specialty occupations is expected to increase in all major industrial sectors in the economy. Despite the widespread growth of the professional specialty occupations, nearly 90 percent of the projected increase in employment for these workers is in the services industry division, led by educational services and health services.
Other service industries that are expected to contribute significantly to the growth of professional jobs are social services, business services, and engineering management services. Federal, state, and local government jobs for professional specialty workers are projected to grow.
Employment of technicians and related support workers is projected to grow. The 20 percent rate of increase is considerably slower than the 30 percent attained in the earlier. The proportion of total employment in this group was just 3.5 percent and is expected to be about the same in the near future.. The occupational subgroup health technicians and technologists is expected to account for 70 percent of the growth in the total number of technicians. Virtually all of the job growth in this group is expected to be in the services industries.
