The Occupational Outlook Handbook is a career guide developed and maintained by the U.S. Government’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). It provides information on a wide range of occupations. For each profession, it describes what workers do on the job, working conditions, required training and education, earnings, and expected job prospects.
The BLS is an independent national statistical agency that collects, processes, analyzes, and disseminates essential statistical data to the American public, the U.S. Congress, other federal agencies, state and local governments, and business and labor. The BLS also serves as a statistical resource to the Department of Labor.
BLS data must satisfy several criteria, including relevance to current social and economic issues, timeliness in reflecting today’s rapidly changing economic conditions, consistent accuracy and high statistical quality, and impartiality in both subject matter and presentation.
How the Occupational Outlook Handbook Works
The Occupational Outlook Handbook is an excellent resource for job seekers and career changers. One way to start is to use the Occupational Outlook Handbook A–Z Index to browse a list of all the occupations included and then conduct in-depth research by reviewing the detailed descriptions of occupations that sound appealing.
You can also look at clusters. The Occupational Outlook Handbook organizes information about occupations into 25 major groups. Users can scan groups that seem related to their interests and find lists of specific jobs related to the group in order to investigate options.
Occupational clusters in the Occupational Outlook Handbook include:
Architecture and engineering
Arts and design
Community and social service management
Computer and information technology
Construction and extraction
Education, training, and library
Entertainment and sports
Farming, fishing, and forestry
Food preparation and serving
Health care
Legal
Military
Office and administrative support
Personal care and service
You can also browse information in the Occupational Outlook Handbook by:
Growth rate: Browing careers by potential growth can help you assess whether a prospective field will grow by the time you finish your education or transition back into the workplace. This information is also included in the handbook’s job descriptions.
Projected number of new jobs: You can also browse by which fields are projected to have the most jobs. This is different from growth rate, as a field with very few jobs could add a small number of jobs and grow quickly. This statistic looks at how many new jobs will be available, which doesn’t necessarily mean that field is growing. It may be a career with a high turnover like bartending.
