Dynamics of Occupational Change: Implications for the Occupational Requirements Survey

Existing labor force surveys in the United States and elsewhere provide strong cross-sectional and time series data on key variables, such as job-holding, job-seeking, hours worked, earnings, occupation, and industry. However, for numerous reasons, researchers in both the United States and other advanced economies have long sought standard metrics for a richer set of variables on job characteristics and job quality, including the nature of job tasks and job skill requirements, and a range of working conditions (e.g., environmental conditions). Unfortunately, despite some recent improvements, measures of detailed job characteristics remain scarce or thin, and there are no definitive or consensus models to follow. Measures are relatively unstandardized and few have been repeated over time, limiting researchers’ ability to measure change. The unsettled state of research and practice has become a more pressing concern now that the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are conducting the Occupational Requirements Survey (ORS) to populate a database that fills longstanding gaps in measuring job characteristics of the workforce. This report is intended to assist BLS understand (1) historical rates of change in job requirements, (2) potential rates of change in the future, (3) ORS-based metrics that might be used to track changes, and (4) thresholds or cut-points that could be used to define sensible levels of change rates (e.g., slow, moderate, rapid).