Future Employment Estimation

Introduction

For Oregon modeling work there is no official (mandated) source or control for total workers / employment for future years, as there is with population. ODOT-TPAU staff have historically used a variety of methods to develop future year employment inputs to travel demand models. In the past, trip-based model future employment development usually focused just on the employer side (employment), and typically did not include a detailed review / alignment with the number of workers (the household side). The ABM requires a much stricter review / development process, where both the number of workers and the jobs (employment) need to be consider at the same time. This additional level of detail requires an updated approach to building the future population.

Historically with trip-based model work, future employment was allocated at the TAZ level (using various methods) and then totaled up and compared to the population for reasonableness (one could think of this as a bottom up approach). The ABM is approach with a top-down method. Where overall job and worker totals for the region are established and then allocated down to the zones (in this case MAZs). There is no required source of information to build the regional totals; ODOT-TPAU has opted to use the 10-year employment forecasts published by the State of Oregon Employment Department (OED) and then continue the 10 year growth assumptions linearly out to the model's future year. ODOT's Statewide Integrated Model (SWIM) can also be used to assess future employment estimates. In the case of SOABM, SWIM was reviewed, but ultimately the team decided to use OED's 10-year forecast as a more official and statewide consistent approach. The use of that data to inform the future year employment development is further described in the steps below.

Future Year Employment Development Steps

The overall steps to develop the future year employment and worker totals are as follows:

• Download (obtain) OED 10 year forecasts for the area
• Map ABM industry (employment/jobs) and occupation (workers) categories to OED employment categories and sum base (or existing) year ABM employment totals to the OED categories
• Apply 10 year OED industry and occupation growth rates for the required number of years to reach the ABM future year to obtain future year employment totals.
• Compare and adjust as needed the end result of the regional forecasted occupation and industry totals. Current guidance is that each occupation category should be within 10% of the regional forecasted job supply (employment by MAZ).

Each of these steps is described in greater detail below.

Obtain OED Forecast

The Oregon Employment Department (OED) provides 10 year employment forecasts for every economic region (clusters of counties) in Oregon. At the time of this documentation the 2017-27 forecast for the Rouge Valley Area (which includes both Jackson and Josephine Counties) could be downloaded here. Note that OED provides both an "Occupational" and "Industry" forecast. The Occupational forecast focuses on the worker side (what skill sets are forecast to be developed and brought in over time for the region). The Industry forecast is on the employment (job) side; what jobs will be growing in the region. The industry forecast is used to grow the MAZ employment totals to be allocated for the region. The Occupational forecast is used to grow the workers for the region which is the control at the population synthesis level (ensuring the region has the correct mix of workers). The ABM occupational (worker) and industry (job) inputs should have some level of balance. Therefore, the development of these controls is typically an iterative process, where each are developed and then reconciled against one another, as is discussed in steps below.

Map Industry and Occupation Categories

OED publishes a very rich set of projections for both industry employment (jobs) and occupational employment (workers). Each of these is more detailed than the categories the ABM, so aggregation is needed to take the information published by OED and align it (use it) in the ABM. The following table maps the industry categories:

Industry Category Mapping

Description	ABM Employment Categories	OED Projected Categories	High Level Grouping for Future Allocation
Accommodation and Food Services employment (NAICS 72)	EMP_ACCFD	Accommodation and Food Services	Service
Administrative and Support and Waste Management employment (NAICS 56)	EMP_ADMIN	Professional and Business Services	Service
Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting employment (NAICS 11)	EMP_AGR	Natural Resources (Minus Mining and Logging)	Industry (change to Other)
Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation employment (NAICS 71)	EMP_ARTS	Leisure and Hospitaltiy (Minus Accommodation and Food Services)	Other (change to Service)
Construction employment (NAICS 23)	EMP_CONSTR	Construction	Industry (change to Other)
Educational Services employment (NAICS 61)	EMP_EDUC	Local Education	Other
Finance and Insurance employment (NAICS 52)	EMP_FINANCE	Financial Activities	Service
Food Manufacturing employment (NAICS 31)	EMP_FOOD	Manufacturing (Minus Durable goods)	Service (change to Industry)
Health Care and Social Assistance employment (NAICS 62)	EMP_HEALTH	Health Care and Social Assistance	Service
Information employment (NAICS 51)	EMP_INFO	Information	Service (change to Industry)
Primary Metal Manufacturing employment (NAICS 33)	EMP_METAL	Durable goods (Minus Wood Product)	Industry
Management of Companies and Enterprises employment (NAICS 55)	EMP_MGMT	Professional and Business Services	Service
Mining, Quarrying, and Oil and Gas Extraction employment (NAICS 21)	EMP_MIN	Mining and Logging	Industry (change to Other)
Other Services (except Public Administration) Religious employment (NAICS 81)	EMP_OTHER	Other Services and Private Households	Service
Postal Service employment (NAICS 49)	EMP_POSTAL	Federal Government Post Office	Service (change to Other)
Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services employment (NAICS 54)	EMP_PROF	Professional and Business Services	Service
Public Administration employment (NAICS 92)	EMP_PUBADM	Government (Minus Post Office)	Service (change to Other)
Real Estate and Rental and Leasing employment (NAICS 53)	EMP_REALES	Professional and Business Services	Service
Retail Trade employment (NAICS 44)	EMP_RETAIL	Retail Trade	Retail
Sporting Goods, Hobby, Musical Instruments and Book stores employment (NAICS 45)	EMP_SPORT	Retail Trade	Retail
Transportation employment (NAICS 48)	EMP_TRANS	Transportation, Warehousing, and Utilities	Service (change to Other)
Utilities employment (NAICS 22)	EMP_UTIL	Transportation, Warehousing, and Utilities	Service (change to Other)
Wholesale Trade employment (NAICS 42)	EMP_WHOLE	Wholesale Trade	Retail (change to Other)
Wood Product Manufacturing employment (NAICS 32)	EMP_WOOD	Wood Product Manufacturing	Industry

Note - Errors were found with the original categorization used in this process. 11 corrections to the "High Level Grouping for Future Allocation" have been made as captured above. When this allocation process is next applied the corrected categories should be used and the document should be updated to just reflect the correct categorization. AB 1-14-20

Occupation, or workers, is not represented in as much detail as the industry (jobs) side (above). The ABM is broken into 6 occupational categories, which are an aggregation of the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) used in Census (which then aligns with NAICS on the employment/industry side). The following table maps the occupation categories used in the ABM:

Occupation Category Mapping

Description	ABM Occupation Categories	OED / SOC Title	SOC Codes
Management, Business, Science and Arts	OCCP1	Management; Business and Financial Operations; Computer and Mathematical; Architecture and Engineering; Life, Physical, and Social Science; Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media; Personal Care and Service	11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 27, 39
White Collar Service	OCCP2	Community and Social Service; Legal; Education, Training, and Library; Healthcare Practitioners and Technical; Healthcare Support	21, 23, 25, 29, 31
Blue Collar Service	OCCP3	Protective Service; Food Preparation and Serving Related; Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance;	33, 35, 37
Sales and Office Support	OCCP4	Sales and Related; Office and Administrative Support	41, 43
Natural Resource, Construction and Maintenance	OCCP5	Farming, Fishing, and Forestry; Construction and Extraction; Installation, Maintenance, and Repair	45, 47, 49
Production, Transportation and Material Moving	OCCP6	Production; Transportation and Material Moving; Military Specific	51, 53, 55

Additionally, the ABM has an internal crosswalk that helps to associate workers by occupation into jobs in the right industry. This is not a perfectly clean alignment, but the Occupation Factors crosswalk helps split jobs into occupation categories, so that workers can be attracted to the correct locations. This file can and should be used for total employment and workers to help ensure an approximate balance between the number of workers specified with the number of jobs specified.

Apply Growth Rates to Create Future Year Totals

With 10 year forecasts for both industry (jobs) and occupation (workers) obtained from OED and crosswalks for those growth projections to the ABM employment (jobs) and occupation categories, future year totals for both (jobs and workers) can be established. OED's forecasts come at a multi-county region (in this case Jackson and Josephine) and not the model boundary specifically, therefore the total values from the forecasts can not be used directly. Instead the current year and forecast year values from OED are aggregated based on the crosswalks above and then used to develop an annual growth rate (trend). Below is an example of that process for occupation for the 2017-27 OED data obtained.

Category	SOC	2017Total	2027Total	Growth	Growth%	Annual Growth%
Mgmt, Business, Science and Arts	11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 27, 39	21,733	24,956	3,223	14.8%	1.48%
White Collar Service	21, 23, 25, 29, 31	20,883	23,715	2,832	13.6%	1.36%
Blue Collar Service	33, 35,37	18,977	21,681	2,704	14.2%	1.42%
Sales, Office Support	41, 43	32,903	34,846	1,943	5.9%	0.59%
Natural Resource, Construction and Maintenance	45, 47, 49	12,675	14,995	2,320	18.3%	1.83%
Production, Transportation and Material Moving	51, 53, 55	15,992	17,381	1,389	8.7%	0.87%

These growth rates are then applied to the existing year developed occupation or employment (job) totals to create PUMA or region (like County or UGB) level control totals for the area. In the case of employment there is a separate process to do an initial allocation of the employment down to the TAZ and then MAZ level. The MAZ level employment data is then reviewed and adjusted as needed by local officials and representatives to ensure that employment growth is in alignment with current and anticipated development plans and projects. For occupation (workers), currently the process only allocates those totals down to the PUMA level, and so the end result is the product from applying the annual growth rates developed above to the PUMA level existing occupation totals.

Review and Adjust Regional Employment Totals

It is possible and likely that this work will not result in a perfectly balanced set of inputs. Depending on the region, there can be some imbalance between workers (by occupation) and the job supply, however in most cases they should be roughly equal for a given modeled region. Current guidance suggests that no occuptaion total should be more than 10% different (high or low) than the job supply. The "job supply" refers to MAZ level employment by the 24 employment categories summed up to the 6 occupation categories used in ABM for the entire model region (noting that workers can travel to jobs all over the region, so sub-area totaling and balancing should not be necessary or recommended).

The Occupation Factors table allows for the 24 employment categories to be divided and re-tabulated into jobs by occupation category. The MAZ employment should be summed by each of the 24 employment categories and then the occupation factors table can be used to develop jobs by the six occupation categories for the region. These job totals (by occupation) are then compared to the occupation (workers) controls by category. An example of this is provided below. In that table one can see that "OCCP5" (Natural Resource, Construction and Maintenance) is about 20% too high when compared to the number of jobs. Because of this a manual intervention was made to adjust OCCP5 down to about ~14,500 (or just under 110% of the job supply total).

Category	Occupation	Employment	Comparison
OCCP1	34,521	34,444	100%
OCCP2	23,966	23,838	101%
OCCP3	18,974	20,804	91%
OCCP4	35,991	35,917	100%
OCCP5	15,938	13,341	119%
OCCP6	16,212	16,379	99%