The New York Times has published an addicting, interactive online series of charts graphically depicting the changes in occupations and jobs in the U.S. over the last decade.
Assembled from data collected every month by the government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 255 charts in The Times’ project provides a quick look at the trends in so many industry types and occupations. For instance, jobs in nail salons have soared, but they are among the poorest paying of jobs that the BLS surveys.
At the other end of the spectrum, computer jobs — from software publishing to systems design and programming — have not only grown rapidly, but so has the pay. Software publishing now pays an average of $107,785 annually.
One of the eight major interactive charts shows what The Times calls “The Medical Economy.” In a note accompanying the chart, The Times notes, “The middle-wage industries that have added jobs are overwhelmingly in health care.”
Mouse over the various lines lines on the chart (on The Times’ site) to see the number of jobs and average annual wage at any given month since 2004. For example, in January 2004 there were 291,000 jobs in outpatient care centers. In April 2014 (the most recent month), there were 506,900.
With the BLS reporting that the U.S. economy has now recovered the 8.7 million jobs lost during the recession, The Times undertook to show “how the recession reshaped the nation’s job market, industry by industry.”
Referring to it is as a “mixed recovery,” The Times says, “Industries that paid in the middle of the wage spectrum generally lost jobs. And while the economy overall is back to its pre-recession level, it hasn’t added the roughly 10 million jobs needed to keep up with growth in the working-age population.”
Conveniently, industries and jobs in related areas are shown together, even if the government’s indexing system doesn’t necessarily group them together. So for instance, jobs in nail salons are shown alongside pet grooming, boarding and training, and other types of jobs under a “Grooming Boom” chart heading.
Some of the charts show drill down data; others are more top level. They include salary data and indicate which categories have lost, gained, or held steady over the years.