© Copyright 2000 by the Wyoming Department of Employment, Research & Planning


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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