Glossary

  • Base Period:
    A point in time used as a reference point for comparison with some later period.

  • CIP Code (Classification for Instructional Program Code):
    A coding system developed by the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) to help government entities more accurately track, assess and report the fields students are enrolling in and the completions and graduation from each field. Under a field of study, institutions offer programs which are comprised of a set of courses related to specific subjects. Descriptions for National CIP Codes (those with 7th and 8th digits of “00”) may be found.

  • Demand
    Demand is the number of suitably-skilled people required to fulfill the requirements for an occupation. For the purposes of this application, the demand in occupation or an industry is drawn from two sources: Employment Projections, and HWOL.

  • Employed/Employment:
    Persons 16 years and over in the civilian non-institutional population who, during the reference week, (a) did any work at all (at least 1 hour) as paid employees; worked in their own business, profession, or on their own farm, or worked 15 hours or more as unpaid workers in an enterprise operated by a member of the family; and (b) all those who were not working but who had jobs or businesses from which they were temporarily absent because of vacation, illness, bad weather, childcare problems, maternity or paternity leave, labor-management dispute, job training, or other family or personal reasons, whether or not they were paid for the time off or were seeking other jobs. Each employed person is counted only once, even if he or she holds more than one job. Excluded are persons whose only activity consisted of work around their own house (painting, repairing, or own home housework) or volunteer work for religious, charitable, and other organizations.

  • Employment projection (Demand for Additional Workers):
    Job openings resulting from employment growth and the need to replace workers who leave an occupation.

  • HWOL (Help Wanted OnLine):
    WantedAnalytics.com aggregates job listings by region, occupation, and industry to help estimate worker demand across skillsets and geographies.

  • Industry:
    A group of establishments that produce similar products or provide similar services. For example, all establishments that manufacture automobiles are in the same industry. A given industry, or even a particular establishment in that industry, might have employees in dozens of occupations. The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) groups similar establishments into industries. NAICS is replacing the former Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system.

  • Industry Cluster:
    A group of industries that are closely linked by common product markets, labor pools, similar technologies, supplier chains and/or other economic ties.

  • Job:
    The total number of persons on establishment payrolls employed full or part time. Persons on the payroll of more than one establishment are counted in each establishment.

  • Job opening (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey):
    A specific position of employment to be filled at an establishment; conditions include the following: there is work available for that position, the job could start within 30 days, and the employer is actively recruiting for the position.

  • Location Quotient:
    Location Quotient(LQ) is a measure of the employment share of an industry in a particular area to the employment share in a reference area. LQs allow for comparison of how concentrated an industry’s employment in an area is to that of the country overall and, by extension, to other areas. If an LQ is equal to 1, then the industry has the same share of its local area employment as it does in the reference area; an LQ greater than 1 indicates an industry with a greater share of the local area employment (more concentrated) than is the case in the reference area; and an LQ less than 1 indicates a local industry with a lesser share (less concentrated) than that of the reference area.

  • Median wage:
    An occupational median wage estimate is the boundary between the highest paid 50 percent and the lowest paid 50 percent of workers in that occupation. Half of the workers in a given occupation earn more than the median wage, and half the workers earn less than the median wage.

  • NAICS Code (North American Industry Classification System Code):
    The successor to the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) system; this system of classifying business establishments is being adopted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico. NAICS uses a production-oriented conceptual framework to group establishments into industries based on the activity in which they are primarily engaged. Establishments using similar raw material inputs, similar capital equipment, and similar labor are classified in the same industry. In other words, establishments that do similar things in similar ways are classified together.

  • Occupation:
    A set of activities or tasks that employees are paid to perform. Employees that perform essentially the same tasks are in the same occupation, whether or not they work in the same industry. Some occupations are concentrated in a few particular industries; other occupations are found in many industries.

  • Occupational groups:
    A group of related occupations; examples: sales occupations and service occupations.

  • Region:
    refers to Texas Workforce Development Area (TWSA) which is a labor market area that is usually a group of contiguous counties where employment, training, and educational services are provided as established under the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act to provide services for dislocated workers and other eligible individuals. The State of Texas is divided into twenty-eight (28) local workforce development areas. These areas are serviced by the Workforce Development Boards.

  • Shortage (as in shortage of workers):
    Shortages occur in a market economy when the demand for workers for a particular occupation is greater than the supply of workers who are qualified, available, and willing to do that job.

  • SOC Code (Standard Occupational Classification Code):
    This system is used by Federal statistical agencies to classify workers into occupational categories for the purpose of collecting, calculating, or disseminating data. All workers are classified into one of 840 detailed occupations according to their occupational definition. To facilitate classification, detailed occupations are combined to form 461 broad occupations, 97 minor groups, and 23 major groups. Detailed occupations in the SOC with similar job duties, and in some cases skills, education, and/or training, are grouped together. These categories will be revised in 2018.

  • STEM:
    is an educational program developed to prepare primary and secondary students for college and graduate study in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In addition to subject-specific learning, STEM aims to foster inquiring minds, logical reasoning, and collaboration skills.

  • Supply of workers:
    Often refers to the labor force. The concept focuses on worker characteristics, especially their education and training, but also characteristics such as experience (often considered to be correlated with age), physical strength (often considered to be inversely correlated with age), ability to work in teams, etc. Some demographic characteristics that are not to be considered in hiring and promotion decisions, but that are studied, include gender, race, ethnicity, parental and marital statuses.

    Supply is an estimate on the number of people who can fulfill a requirement for an occupation. Texas Labor Analysis uses two sources to estimate the potential supply. Work in Texas (WIT): Work in Texas is a department of Texas Workforce Commission which provides job matching services for both employers and job seekers. For Texas Labor Analysis, we draw the data of job seekers, who are actively seeking employment. The Work in Texas system is designed in such a way that every job seeker is given an option to select up to ten occupations that they can apply for. In theory, every applicant can act as a potential supply for ten occupations. THECB: The Texas Higher Education Co-ordinating Board collects data relating to Texas higher education system. The data used in Texas Labor Analysis is the Graduate and Enrollment information from schools in Texas. A crosswalk relates the programs of study that students graduate from to occupations.

  • Wage Differential:
    the ratio of occupational wages to average pay earned by all workers in a specific area. Because the cost of living Texas fluctuates from region to region, earnings by occupation tend to vary accordingly. Here, wage differentials may offer further insight into the value that specific communities place on certain occupations and the standard of living enjoyed by workers in these occupations.

  • WIT (WorkInTexas):
    All job-seekers collecting unemployment benefits must register on WorkInTexas.com. This job-seeker data is then aggregated by region, occupation, and industry to help estimate worker supply across skillsets and geographies.