DEMAND/DECLINE METHODOLOGY

Summer 2007

As in the past, the purpose of the 2007 Demand/Decline List is to provide current and projected labor market conditions by occupation for purposes of assisting in allocating training resources. The basic approach is to group all occupations for which we have sufficient data (employment estimated at 50 or more persons) into either demand, balanced, or not in demand categories.

To do this we derive a rank based index showing how relatively favorable or unfavorable an occupation is to a prospective job seeker in a given Workforce Development Area (WDA). Using this index, we put the top 30 percent of occupations in demand, the bottom 50 percent in “not in demand”, and the middle 20 percent in the balanced category.

This time around we used four different variables to derive the index, with different weights associated with each. They are as follows: 

Combined rank for short-term (second quarter of 2006 to second quarter of 2008) and long-term (2004-2014) occupational projections based on the average of two criteria: annual average growth rate and total number of job openings due to growth and replacement. (45%) –Source: Employment Security Department Occupational Projections

Occupational Unemployment Ratio 2006 (25%) – Estimation of an occupations unemployment ratio derived from annual continuing unemployment insurance claims, number of weeks claimed and estimated numbers of jobs in occupation. Source: Employment Security Department Unemployment Insurance (UI) Claims and Occupational Projections

Change in UI claims (10%) – The percentage change in unemployment claims by occupation from 2002 to 2006. This is meant to address the issue of certain occupations (some construction related occupations) having high UI claims as a nature of the job, and not market favorable per se. Source: Employment Security Department Unemployment Insurance (UI) Claims

Vacancy (20%) – Statewide number of job openings. Currently the data used is from the April 2007 Survey. Source: Employment Security Department’s Job Vacancy Survey.

Once we have the variables for unemployment, UI claims and job vacancies, we used them to rank all occupations in every area. These ranks were combined with projections based rankings to calculate the index which was used to make a final ranking. For example, a high ranking for vacancy and relatively high rank from projections for registered nurses would drive the final index higher. In cases where the data is not available there, it is not used in the tabulation of the index. This list is generated once-a-year.

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