Do the CTE courses in your division prepare students for jobs with real employment opportunities? We have prepared an Opportunity Analysis for each of Virginia's Workforce Investment Areas to help you answer this question.
This document is based on occupational employment projections for Virginia prepared by the Virginia Employment Commission. The VEC projects employment for Virginia Workforce Investment Areas. They do not make projections for cities, counties or school divisions, because it is impossible to reliably predict about changes in small areas. Even these large area projections are only tentative, based on the assumption that we do not experience dramatic social or economic change in the projection period, an assumption that is obviously no longer true.
The most recent projections series for Virginia WIAs estimates occupational employment for 2004 and projects to 2014. Obviously many changes have taken place since these projections were done, and the exact numbers are no longer to be relied upon. However these projections can still help us to understand which occupations are large and likely to employ many people and which are small and only employ a few. The relative sizes of occupations have not changed greatly, despite our changing and troubled economy.
Please contact us if you want help evaluating this old data or thinking about how it might apply to your current situation.
Opportunity Analysis
We have prepared an Opportunity Analysis for each of the WIAs for which the VEC has projected employment. These provide information on occupations related to each Career and Technical Education course, including:
- CTE Course titles & codes
- Occupation titles and codes
- Usual educational attainment
- Entry level and experienced worker wages
- 2004 employment estimates and 2014 employment projections
- Projected change in employment.
High Skill, High Wage, High Demand Occupations
Perkins IV legislation frequently refers to "high skill, high wage, high demand occupations" but does not actually define the terms. According to NAPE, states and policy experts will need to work together with the Secretary to bring clarity to the terms and define them as is necessary for the provisions in Perkins where it is used. In their analysis of Perkins Equity Provisions (available in the Occupation Data Resources Panel) NAPE recommends a list of readings and initial considerations for interpreting the High Skill, High Wage and High Demand.
In addition to these sources from NAPE, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a list of "High-wage, high-growth occupations, by educational attainment cluster and earnings" every two years when they release the Occupational Projections & Training Data.
