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 employment categories to OED employment categories and sum base (or existing) year ABM employment totals to the OED categories
• Apply 10 year OED employment growth rates for the required number of years to reach the ABM future year to obtain future year employment totals.
• Map ABM occupation categories to employment groups to growth works by occupation category in a similar fashion as employment (jobs) were grown.

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
Arts, Entertainment, and Recreation employment (NAICS 71)	EMP_ARTS	Leisure and Hospitaltiy (Minus Accommodation and Food Services)	Other
Construction employment (NAICS 23)	EMP_CONSTR	Construction	Industry
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
Health Care and Social Assistance employment (NAICS 62)	EMP_HEALTH	Health Care and Social Assistance	Service
Information employment (NAICS 51)	EMP_INFO	Information	Service
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
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
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
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
Utilities employment (NAICS 22)	EMP_UTIL	Transportation, Warehousing, and Utilities	Service
Wholesale Trade employment (NAICS 42)	EMP_WHOLE	Wholesale Trade	Retail
Wood Product Manufacturing employment (NAICS 32)	EMP_WOOD	Wood Product Manufacturing	Industry

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.