Author: Chi Wong
The 2018-2028 long-term occupation projections dashboard is a powerful new tool to explore anticipated trends in occupational employment for North Carolina and its constituent regions. This blog provides a small set of tips for users that want to learn how to take advantage of the workbook but are unsure of how to start.
1. The value of tooltips
Each tab displays information about occupational projections through visual representations such as shapes, bars, and colors. However, you may still want to see some of the exact numbers associated with specific occupations or occupation groups (e.g. growth rate, star rating ). Hovering over any given visual element will display those exact figures in a box known as a tooltip.
In the above example, Annual Transfers represent most of the projected growth in Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations. The exact share can be determined through the tooltip, which shows that 46,848 out of the projected 83,914 annual total openings from 2018-2028 will come from annual transfers.
2. Finding a specific occupation easily
Jobseekers may be curious about specific occupations in their area. The quickest way to look up a particular job is to use the Openings and Growth Rates tab. For a given region, the full list of employment projections is displayed in both the upper and lower half, but each visualization is either organized by their number of annual job openings or by their annual job growth rate.
The above example uses the “Search by Job Title” functionality to search for Registered Nurses and the projections data related to that occupation. Clicking the “x” in the toolbar on the far right-hand side removes the search query and displays the full list of occupations.
3. Know the many ways to filter and sort occupations
To streamline users’ experience, there are several “Occupation by” tabs:
- Occupation by Education refers to a jobseeker’s highest level of educational attainment.
- Occupation by Groups refers to jobs’ BLS occupation groups.
- Occupation by Clusters refers to jobs’ O*NET career clusters.
- Occupation by Star Rating refers to ratings assigned by North Carolina’s Star Jobs system.
By using the appropriate tab, relevant jobs can be quickly displayed, with job growth rates and annual openings displayed at both an aggregated and occupation-level.
In the example above, the Occupation by Education tab provides state-level projections information on jobs that require no formal educational credential. The upper part summarizes the data and provides breakdowns by separation type and star rating, and the lower part orders individual occupations by their annual growth rate and annual openings.
4. Know how best to compare occupations
What if multiple constraints need to be considered simultaneously? The Projections Comparison tabs can be used to produce highly customized views. The Projections Comparison – Plot tab displays projections data via a scatter plot, whereas the Projections Comparison – Table tab displays projections data via a data table.
By including dotted lines to represent the statewide average annual growth rate and statewide median annual wage across all occupations, the Projection Comparison – Plot tab visually organizes occupations into “quadrants” by their wage and growth rate compared to the state. Those in the upper right quadrant are generally considered more promising as their growth rate is faster than the state and pay is greater than the state median. Occupations in the lower left quadrant, by contrast, are projected to grow slower than the state and pay less than the state median.