If you want to see what industries and occupations are adding jobs, which are losing, and where they stand, you could you spend a few hours with the Bureau of Labor Statistics drilling into the employment numbers there.
But for a quick look at dozens and dozens of job types, take a look at the amazing — and addictive — interactive charts The New York Times assembled from the BLS data.
The three charts here showing temp, search and PEO jobs, are just a sample of the 255 charts. At a glance, you can see how so many industry types and occupations have fared over the last 10 years
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. One of the charts shown here includes employment placement agency workers and executive search employees (308,900). Another shows PEO employees (397,100) under the heading “Employer human resource services.”
Because the chart titles don’t necessarily conform to the BLS category names, including the appropriate NAICS code for each of the 255 charts would have been helpful. Nevertheless, The Times’ project is an addicting, and graphically easy way to see at a glance what’s happened to so many jobs and industries since before and through the recession years.