After that brief interlude yesterday, today I'm going to be jumping right into the next large area for analysis: employment numbers and hiring statistics. These are just as, if not more important than all of the fields of analysis previously explored. After all, what do hours, salary, and job satisfaction matter if you can't find a job in the first place.
There are a few sub-categories in this field. There's the employment rate, the job growth statistics, the absolute number of jobs available, the absolute job growth, and (since I didn't do it in the pay section), salary distribution. This week, I'll talk about all of these statistics, what they mean, and how they are useful. Next week, I'll begin looking at numbers for specific fields.
The employment rate is a national number put out by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics. It's a description of the number of people working compared to the total number of people in the labor force. It's a general indicator of the state of the economy. It's not the end-all, be-all of employment statistics, though, and is very limited in its use. It doesn't take into account people who have stopped seeking work, or who are employed only partly through the year. Still, it can be useful. The trouble is that this is a national statistic and compiling a field-specific one is more difficult. This is simply because there is no reliable way to count the total labor force for that field, as people are capable of switching careers. An out-of-work mechanical engineer could give up looking for a mechanical engineering job and search instead for an aerospace job. It's very hard to gauge whether someone belongs to one labor force or another.
As such, the employment rate is useful for populations of all sizes, but only as long as they contain the entire population and its workforce, rather than a specific subset.
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