© Copyright 2006 by the Wyoming Department of Employment, Research & Planning
Vol. 42 No. 12
Occupations found in industries with the greatest forecasted short-term employment growth were matched against the O*NET skills database. This resulted in each occupation having a set of associated skills with varying levels of importance. Operation and control is the fastest growing primary skill in the short term. The top 10 list of most important is dominated by fundamental skills (e.g., active listening, speaking, reading comprehension, mathematics, and writing) emphasizing the importance of basic education.
O*NET, the Occupational Information Network, is a comprehensive database of worker attributes and job characteristics (O*NET Consortium, n.d.). The database serves as a resource that supports public and private sector efforts to identify and develop the skills of the American workforce. It provides a common language for defining and describing occupations. Its flexible design also captures rapidly changing job requirements. Part of this design includes 46 skills that describe worker requirements. Each is ranked by importance from 1 to 5 for each occupation. The 46 skills are divided into six broad categories:
Skill Needs of the Available Jobs
Occupations found in industries with the greatest forecasted short-term employment growth (See Table 1; Wyoming Department of Employment, n.d.) were matched against the O*NET skills database. This resulted in each occupation having a set of associated skills with varying levels of importance.
As an example, Table 2 illustrates the level of importance for the various skills for one occupation: travel agents. The level of importance can range from 1 to 5, with 1 being the least and 5 the most important. In this case, coordination, service orientation, and speaking are the three most important. Installation, programming, repairing, and science are the least important.
Table 1 illustrates the primary O*NET skill only. Using this method, each job is represented by only one skill. Therefore, employment projections can also be used as a skills projection because each job reflects a primary skill.
Operation and control is the fastest growing primary skill in the short term (between 2003 and 2005), with an expected increase of 571 associated jobs across 48 different occupations. Operation and control is defined as controlling operations of equipment or systems and is a component of such occupations as commercial pilots (Standard Occupational Classification [SOC] 53-2012), petroleum pump systems operators (SOC 51-8093), and broadcast technicians (SOC 27-4012). Service orientation is the second fastest growing skill with an expected increase of 484 jobs in 26 occupations (Wyoming Department of Employment, n.d).
Technical skills such as equipment selection, installation, and repairing comprise the largest percentage of the top 10 fastest growing skills. These are very concrete skills as opposed to basic learning skills or more abstract constructs like visioning. This finding further emphasizes results which report that the majority of job growth in Wyoming will require on-the-job training rather than advanced education (Wyoming Department of Employment, n.d).
In order to develop a profile of the growth of all rather than just the primary skill, we created an index of importance. Each skill associated with an occupation was given a relative weight based on the O*NET assigned level of importance. The weights were applied to the occupational projections so expected changes in skill importance could be observed.
Table 3 contains an index of importance for 2003 to 2005. The index was created only for occupations found within industries with the greatest projected short-term employment growth (Wyoming Department of Employment, n.d). According to this measure, active listening and speaking are the two most important. None of the skills changed in their relative importance during the short-term projection period. This can be interpreted to mean that the foundation of Wyoming’s economy and its dependence on basic skills is unlikely to change quickly.
Of the top 10 highest ranking, basic skills (e.g., active listening, speaking, reading comprehension, mathematics, and writing) comprised the largest percentage. Every occupation relies to some extent on the ability of workers to communicate and learn.
Skill Needs of the Projected Jobs
The same process of matching O*NET skills to occupations and ranking them by level of importance was applied to occupations found in industries with the greatest forecasted long-term employment growth 2002-2012 (Wyoming Department of Employment, n.d). Table 4 illustrates the projected growth of the primary skill. In this case, service orientation is the fastest growing with an expected increase of 3,519 associated jobs. Operation and control is the second fastest with growth of 2,232 jobs.
Although the relative order changed over the forecast period, the broad category of technical skills remained the largest contributor to the top 10. This was again in line with projected educational requirements of primarily on-the-job training (Wyoming Department of Employment, n.d.).
Table 5 contains the index of importance for the occupations with the greatest forecasted long-term occupational employment growth. The relative importance is similar to that found in occupations whose primary skill is service orientation in that active listening and speaking are the two most important (Wyoming Department of Employment, n.d.).
Two skills increased their index over the time period by 0.1: implementation planning and troubleshooting. This indicates that we project those to be somewhat more in demand in 2012 than in 2002. The top 10 is dominated by fundamental skills; emphasizing the importance of basic education.
References
O*NET Consortium. (n.d.). What is O*NET? Retrieved April 11, 2005, from http://www.onetcenter.org/
Wyoming Department of Employment, Research & Planning. (n.d.). Employment and Occupational Projections. Retrieved May 11, 2005, from http://doe.state.wy.us/LMI/outlTOC.htm
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