Introduction to Industrial and
Occupational Staffing Patterns and Wages
by:
Tony Glover, Senior Analyst
R
esearch
& Planning (R&P) recently developed two tools to assist communities, firms, educators
and counselors1 in identifying the labor needs and
costs associated with establishing new businesses or industrial contractions and expansions.
The first is the "Industrial and Occupational Staffing Patterns" and the second is the "Wages
and Occupations" table. This article serves as a brief introduction
2 to these new resources available via our
Internet site .
Industrial and Occupational Staffing Patterns
The "National Industry-Occupation Employment Matrix" provided by the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS) was used to create the staffing patterns for 74 different industries.
The staffing patterns reflect the distribution (percent) of occupations necessary to
staff a specific firm or industry. Table 1 shows that opening
a Legal Services [Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) 81] firm with 100 employees
would create the need for 31 Lawyers (31%), 27 Legal Secretaries (27%), 11 Paralegals
(11%), 3 Bookkeeping Clerks (3%), etc. (for a complete list of occupations within SIC
81 visit our Internet site). The percents are calculated based on the typical number
of occupations occurring within the industry nationally.
Wages and Occupations
The "1998 Wage Survey," collected by the states and compiled by BLS, was used to create
the occupational wages and employment data. The wages by occupation data available on
our Internet site give the mean hourly wage for 777 occupations for each of the 50
states along with the aggregated national average wage. Data for some occupations in
a specific state may not be available because the occupation does not exist within the
state or due to issues of confidentiality; for instance, Wyoming only provides data for
417 of the 777 occupations. For example, if there was only one lawyer in the state, it
would be possible to infer the wages for that individual; therefore the data are
suppressed. Additionally, the table contains the typical national education and
experience levels necessary to work in the occupation and the percent difference of
each state’s wage compared to the national average. A review of the data in
Table 2 demonstrates that Medicine and Health Services
Managers [Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) code 15008], typically have a
Bachelor’s degree plus work experience and make $25.17/hour nationally, $22.09/hour
in Wyoming (12.2% less than the national average) and $27.74/hour in Alaska (10.2%
more than the national average).
Using the "Industrial and Occupational Staffing Patterns" and "Wages and Occupations"
together, it becomes possible to anticipate the labor demand and associated costs of
recruiting or creating and operating a new firm in Wyoming compared to other states.
Both of these resources will be discussed in greater detail in the forthcoming
occupational projections publication from R&P. Meanwhile, check out our
Internet site.
1 If educators and counselors learned about a business closing
likely to occur in their community, they could use the staffing patterns to generate
a list of occupations for which dislocation is likely and implement a re-training
program to get them back to work.
2 A more detailed description of these resources will be available
in Outlook 2000: Detailed Occupational Projections and
Labor Supply publication from Research & Planning.
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These pages designed by
Gayle C. Edlin.
Last modified on
by
Valerie A. Davis.