The Department of Labor’s Employment & Training Administration recently released a Training and Employment Notice titled “Building and Sustaining an Educated and Prepared STEM Workforce.” The notice provides a short introduction to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) occupations, along with the federal workforce system’s role in fostering it.

With that context, here at EMSI we thought this provided a good opportunity to show how you can analyze your region’s STEM workforce with EMSI’s Strategic Advantage (SA) web-based tool, which integrates dozens of sources to make custom regional labor market research fast, flexible, and simple. With SA, you can see vital statistics on jobs, wages, trends, projections, education levels, skills, and more for any occupation or occupation group, with comparisons to larger areas like states or the whole U.S. You can also see which regional industries are likely to employ workers in these occupations and and further analyze those industries. For a more education-oriented view, the tool allows you to see which regional training providers are offering courses and producing graduates in those occupations. And finally, you can view the occupations as a “career cluster” with various career ladders, or pathways, within it having various specializations.

For quick analysis, go to SA’s Educational Analyst module, and select the “Career Clusters” tool, then the “Career Cluster Data” report. Select timeframe and other options, making sure you choose to aggregate data by cluster. Generate the report and drill down in the “Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics” cluster for regional labor market information for STEM pathways and occupations. (Click the thumbnail for full-size image.)

To get started with more analysis, you’ll need to find a list of STEM occupations using the standard codes and titles used by the federal government. A great place to do this is at the Dept. of Labor’s O*NET site. In Strategic Advantage, go to the Career Pathways module and select the Occupational Analysis > Occupational Programs tool. This will allow you to create an occupation group using O*NET-SOC codes. Find and select the occupations and save the group as “STEM”.

With this list of STEM occupations (and with the individual occupations within it), you can use SA’s Career Pathways module to:

1. View O*NET data on knowledge, skills, and abilities (Occupational Analysis > Occupational Competencies)
2. Compare two occupations’ knowledge, skill, and ability requirements (Occupational Analysis > Compare Occupations)
3. See regional educational institutions that offer related programs (Occupational Analysis > Occupational Programs)
4. See the regional “labor pool” of occupations are compatible with certain STEM occupations (Transition Workers > Into Occupation)
5. Create maps of postsecondary completions in related programs (EMSI GIS)

To just get labor market information, you’ll have to define the list using plain SOC codes in Strategic Advantage’s Economic Forecaster module. These are the same as O*NET-SOC codes except without the 2-digit decimal extension, which allows O*NET to have slightly more detailed occupational categories. With this list, you’ll be able to:

1. See which postsecondary courses of study are linked to these occupations (Educational Analyst > Find Programs)
2. View extensive regional labor market reports with jobs, wages, trends, and projections (Economic Forecaster > Occupation tool > Jobs by Occupation, Occupation Report)
3. See which regional industries employ the most workers in STEM (Economic Forecaster > Occupation tool > Inverse Staffing Patterns)
4. Create maps using occupational data (EMSI GIS).

Here’s an example of chemical engineering jobs in California:

This is just a quick introduction to some of the capabilities of Strategic Advantage. To learn more, current users are encouraged to browse the online help within the tool, or take advantage of EMSI’s free, unlimited Customer Solutions support service. Prospective users can browse our main site for more information or tour videos.

For either Sales or Customer Solutions, feel free to call EMSI at (866) 999-3674 (8am to 5pm Pacific).

Originally posted: Monday, January 7th, 2008
Last modified: Wednesday, January 16th, 2008