| Sumario: | The Occupational Employment Statistics program of the Bureau of Labor Statistics provides information to state employment security agencies that serves as the basis for occupational employment projections. An evaluation of the accuracy of those projections for 20 states found that the more detailed the industry category, the larger the error. Projection errors varied significantly across major industries and across state boundaries. This result is explained as a manifestation of the assumption that the historical employment growth trend would continue into the future, as the result of an unwillingness on the part of analysts to project employment declines, and as an outcome of the target year of the projections (1982) being the trough of a deep national recession. Recommendations are made to improve the accuracy of the state-level industry and occupational employment projection process.
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