plug: graphs prepared using Mariner Calc

updated: 2024-04-08

Hours and Earnings

Average Annual Incomes 1890-1957 by industry/occupation

Annual Starting Salaries of New Grads (from NACE)

Starting Salaries of New Grads (from NACE)

Numbers Employed/Unemployed and Actively Seeking Work by Occupation

Average Weekly Incomes 1914-1948 in production occupations

Numbers Employed by Extremely General Occupation Categories

Numbers Employed by Extremely General Occupation Categories (since 2000)
 
LNU02032201
LNU02032203
LNU02032204
LNU02032213
retrieved via https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/srgate

Numbers UnEmployed by Extremely General Occupation Categories
 
LNU03032215
LNU03032217
LNU03032218
LNU03032227
retrieved via https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/srgate

Unemployment Rates by Extremely General Occupation Categories
Unemployment Rates by Extremely General Occupation Categories since 2008
 
Unemployment Rates by Extremely General Occupation Categories since 2016
 
LNU04032215
LNU04032217
LNU04032218
LNU04032227
retrieved via https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/srgate

Numbers Employed by General Occupation Categories
 
CEU5000000006
CEU5051120006
CEU5051200006
CEU6054000006
CEU6054130006
CEU6054150006
CEU6054151106
CEU6054151206
CEU6054151906
CEU6054170006
CEU6054171006
CEU6056130006
CEU6056131006
CEU6056132006
CEU6056133006
CEU6562000106
retrieved via https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/srgate

Unemployment Rates by (more or less detailed) Occupation Categories

BLS periodically adjusts occupation categories/definitions. Sometimes, they stop reporting a detailed category & lump it into a more general category, other times they split a detailed category into 2. Occasionally, they retain a detailed category, but move it from one general category to another. Sometimes, they have to create new detailed categories as employer preferences shift. Statistics for hyper-detailed categories unavoidably have smaller effective sample sizes & are thus less reliable.

Unemployment Rates by Occupation Categories
Unemployment Rates by Occupation Categories since 2007

Computer wrangling occupations
Computer Network Wranglers
Computer (zoom down into the weeds)

Full Employment Index (1 = good, 2+ = bad)
Full Employment Index zoom down into the weeds (1 = good, 2+ = bad; scale 0.9x to 2.9x)

Driver & Farming

Engineering

Management

Science

Medical ☤

Trades, etc.

Verbal

Verbal

Teaching

STEM occupations unemployment rates

Numbers in what BLS calls the "Work-Force" or "Labor-Force" by Occupation

What BLS calls the "Work-Force" or "Labor-Force" only includes those currently employed in a particular occupation + those who are unemployed and actively seeking work, whose most recent previous employment was in that particular occupation. It does not reflect the pool of able & willing people with a particular skill-set, does not relect the "talent pool".
Someone who has been a neuro-surgeon for 30 years, but loses his job due to employer down-sizing, and works as a "greeter" is considered by BLS not as an under-employed neuro-surgeon, but as a fully employed "greeter", who is not a part of the neuro-surgeon nor of the medical physician nor health care "work-force" nor "talent pool", whether or not one has kept current with "Continuing Medical Education" classes.
Someone who has been a software architect for 20 years, but loses his job and works as a "pet-sitter" while seeking another long-term full-time sotware product design and development job is considered by BLS not as an under-employed software developer, but as a fully employed "pet-sitter", who is not a part of the software developer "work-force".
Someone who has been an agricultural worker for 20 years, but fell off the turnip truck and lands a temporary gig in "IT" while seeking another long-term full-time agricultural job is considered by BLS not as a mal-employed agricultural worker, but as a fully employed "IT professional", who is not a part of the agricultural "work-force" nor "talent pool". Similarly, highly-skilled agronomists are declared to be "un-skilled" or at best "biological scientists" in DoL/BLS fantasyland.

IT "Work-Force": Network
IT "Work-Force" (2)
IT "Work-Force"

Engineering "Work-Force"

Science "Work-Force"

Executive "Work-Force"
Exec "Work-Force" (2)

Science "Work-Force" (2)

Verbal "Work-Force"
Verbal "Work-Force"

Other "Work-Force"

Teaching "Work-Force"

(Take the graphs in the above group with a large grain of salt due to tiny sample sizes in some categories used by BLS to derive the figures at this level of specificity.
They sift them out of the monthly survey of 65K households, but only a tiny fraction of those households are in any one industry or occupation. It would require multiple samples, each aimed at a particular occupation or industry, with a couple thousand in each sample, to get reliable aggregate estimates, but some occupations have only a few thousand total people in them.

As can clearly be seen from the "IT" Work-Force graph, re-definitions of the occupational categories from time to time can wreak havoc with any attempt to find base-lines and interpret economic effects over time.)

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