Creative, Education, Social, Strategic and Technical Occupations as Share of Total Employment
This New Work analysis explores the realm of talent by examining the types of knowledges, skills and aptitudes possessed by the workforce, as opposed to focusing just on jobs or years of education, to help states gauge how they are faring along the spectrum of routine and creative occupations. Overall 16.6 percent of the U.S. workforce is functioning in one of the five New Work roles. The share of the workforce captured by this definition has not changed significantly between 2000 and 2006. Occupations relying on Creative, Education, Social and Technical skills, abilities and aptitudes all showed mild gains relative to the rest of the economy, while Strategic occupations lost jobs, though half of that loss came from a single category (General and operations managers). The technical skills and aptitude grouping is the largest of the five, encompassing over 7 percent of the workforce of an average state. Overall, “New Work” jobs are concentrated in states with close ties to the New Economy, such as Massachusetts (the clear leader), Maryland, New Jersey, Colorado, California and Virginia. Falling far below the national average in concentration of New Work jobs are deep South states such as Mississippi and Arkansas, Midwestern states such as Indiana and Wisconsin and low-wage states that are growing fast, such as Nevada.
This statistic measures the percentage of a state's workforce that has a “New Work” occupation. "New Work” jobs fit into the top part of the human talent pyramid shown in the "New Work" trend description located at http://pewcenteronthestates.org/trends_detail.aspx?id=31686. "New Work" jobs represent approximately 170 occupations chosen for the skills, abilities and aptitudes required to perform them successfully. The skills, abilities and aptitudes associated with the 170 occupations include solving complex problems, developing objectives and strategies, originality and fluency of ideas, judgment and decision making, management of financial resources, organizing, planning, and prioritizing work, systems analysis and evaluation, and thinking creatively. From the occupations described by this set of characteristics, Trends to Watch consultants found clear patterns of five kinds of work that are being performed:
Creative—These occupations include people engaged in the creation of new content. Fluency of Ideas, Originality, and Thinking Creatively are the hallmarks of work in this category.
Education—These occupations include people who train people within the workforce, and work in the formal education system. Developing Objectives & Strategies; Thinking Creatively; and Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing Work are the qualities most important to the occupations in this category.
Social—These are people who strengthen the economy primarily through their adept observation of or work with people and social trends. The qualities that describe this group are fairly evenly distributed, with the highest concentration in Judgment and Decision Making, followed by mild concentrations in Developing Objectives and Strategies, and Making Decisions and Solving Problems.
Strategic—These are people who are tasked with management and decision making, with strong themes of Management of Financial Resources, Fluency of Ideas, Making Decisions and Solving Problems, and Originality.
Technical—These occupations primarily require a strong technical background or deep technical knowledge. Complex Problem Solving, Systems Analysis, and Systems Evaluation are all important to jobs in this group.
The 170 occupations and subsequent five occupational clusters (Creative, Education, Social, Strategic, Technical) were developed by using the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) data to identify overlaps in occupational qualities, educational requirements, and skills. The occupational clusters were then applied to Occupational Employment Statistics to identify concentrations of state employment compared to national employment.
Concentrations compare the share of a state's workforce in a set of occupations to the proportion of national workforce employed in that same set of occupations. States with a higher share of their workforce performing a set of jobs are said to be more "concentrated" in that type of work.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics operates the O*Net database which can be accessed at http://online.onetcenter.org/. Doug Henton and Tracey Grose of Collaborative Economics Inc. provided consulting support on developing and analyzing these data.
