I love looking at the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics data. This data produces employment and wage estimates annually for over 800 occupations and estimates for states and metropolitan areas. I especially enjoy looking at this data from both a job growth and a wage growth perspective. That appeals to my analytical nature. So in keeping with my analytical bent, I examined job and wage growth in the recently published May, 2015 results from 2014 across the various occupations.
My analysis took a quick detour as I looked at some of the hot job and wage growth area. It was easy to take a scatterplot and show the hot quadrant of those jobs with job and wage growth. You can do that yourself with the visualization provided below. But what appeals to my quirky nature is some of these job titles. For example:
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Rail Yard Engineers Dinkey Operators and Hostlers had 54% job growth and 19% wage growth. Too bad there are only 400 of them across the country.
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Mine Cutting and Channeling Machine Operators had 95% job growth and 15% wage growth.
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If you are Model Makers of Wood, you are due for a 25% wage increase and there are 23% more of you to fill the positions.
Getting the right visualization here was interesting. To visualize job AND wage growth is natural for a scatterplot. We extracted the BLS data using Public Insight OmniView for both 2015 and 2014 jobs and wages. We then calculated the job and wage growth as a percentage and plotted it in Tableau Public. This visualization is very powerful. You can use the sliders to isolate those positions you are interested in. For example, slide the wage growth to 20% and you will only find five jobs that fit that criteria. The sliders work in tandem so you can pick those jobs with 10% or more wage growth that make more than $50,000. Or you can pick specific jobs you are interested in by checking them on the filter.
In next week’s blog, we will dive further into this data by using a crosswalk to determine the degreed programs producing the most jobs. Stay tuned. That is unless I change professions and become a Nuclear Power Reactor Operator (91% job growth and 22% wage growth). To interact with the Tableau visualization, click HERE.
