Occupational Outlook Handbook | PDF

PDF

Picking a career isn’t easy, given the education/training you need, the specific tasks involved in each job, and the demand for more employees in each field. The Occupational Outlook Handbook can help you start to make sense of these general concerns to narrow your range of choices.

Using a Occupational Outlook Handbook

With hundreds of entries covering nearly any career, the handbook provides a great starting point for choosing your career path. For each entry, it lists current information from a variety of important categories and projected information as well, including:

• Current median salary and equivalent hourly wage
• Education and experience needed
• Current number of jobs
• Job growth in percentage
• Number of new jobs since the previous edition handbook

In the online version of the handbook, each entry then lists short sections covering:

• Job duties
• Work environment
• How to become a [profession]
• Job outlook
• Similar jobs

You can click each heading to get a longer synopsis of each topic. The job duties and “how to become” sections are the most detailed. Reading each section carefully can give you a lot of practical career-search information.

Job Outlook

For example, the job outlook section for high school teachers states that the profession is expecting 10 percent growth from 2012 to 2022. But it cautions that this is slower-than-average growth compared to other professions, and that employment opportunities will vary by region. This section is particularly insightful though, as it expands upon the outlook by noting that schools have difficulty filling certain positions, such as math and English as a second language, and noting that the student-to-teacher ratio is expected to decline, so teachers will be teaching fewer students in one classroom.

Job Duties

Getting a more concrete idea of daily duties and overall responsibilities is critical in choosing a career, so the job duties section is especially helpful. The high school teacher entry notes numerous tasks: plan lessons, assess students’ understanding, supervise students, work with them individually, communicate with parents and other staff, and so forth. The section also notes that teachers usually specialize in one subject and teach this subject to multiple classrooms, letting prospective teachers know they will be interacting with many students.

Like many databases, you can search the handbook using several tools. Drop-down menus, for example, let you sort results according to the training and education you need, the salary range you wish to make, projected growth rate, and projected new jobs.

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Sources

• http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ooh.pdf