New skills data now available with Employment Projections

With the release of the 2023­­-33 Employment Projections on Aug. 29 providing the job outlook of 832 occupations, the Bureau of Labor Statistics now has information about which skills are most relevant for those occupations. The skills are given a score from 1 to 5, with 5 being the most important. There are lots of ways the information can be used, but here are a few examples: 

• Jobseekers can find the occupations that use skills they already have or learn about which skills may be needed for occupations they’re interested in. For example, someone with a background in mathematics (one of our skills categories) may find that data scientists, actuaries and statisticians all have a high score for that skill and then decide to explore those occupations further. A jobseeker interested in becoming a technical writer may use the data to find out which specific skills are required for this occupation, and can then find training or education to help develop any skills they don’t already have.
• Students can use the skills information along with the other elements of the Occupational Outlook Handbook to plan their future education and training needs — for example, to assist with important decisions about what classes, electives and extracurricular activities to sign up for — based on occupations they may be interested in pursuing in the future. 
• Career planners, including people looking to switch careers or pursue further education, can see which occupations are growing in the economy and connect training or educational opportunities to those skills. 
• Career counselors can use the skills information to assist jobseekers and students to either direct them toward occupations for which they have the skills or to help them understand what skills are needed for an occupation they hope to enter. 
• Workers can use the information to better understand the skills they need to succeed in their current position as well as to advance in their career. 
• Employers can use this information to craft job announcements that target specific skills, and to help inform what training to offer to employees. 
• Researchers can use our more detailed skills data – including specific elements within each skill category – for a variety of projects on occupations and the economy.

Defining skills

The Employment Projections (EP) program defines a skill as a general human capacity that is developed (learned over time through education, training, and/or experience), general (applicable across many occupations), applied (involving action beyond cognitive knowledge of a subject), and work related (limited to performance in employment).

The foundation of our skills data is data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration. We used the detailed O*NET information and other data sources to develop the following 17 skills categories: 

What’s next?

The EP program will continue to include skills data as part of the annual release of employment projections and we welcome your feedback on enhancing the information for future releases to better meet the needs of our data users. Feedback on the skills information or requests for additional information regarding the EP program can be submitted here: Contact EP. An upcoming Monthly Labor Review article will provide more in-depth coverage into the data, methodology and analysis of the skills data, so please stay tuned!

Emily Krutsch and Meredith Miller are economists in the Bureau of Labor Statistics.