Technology, age mix to create likely demand for future jobs

Two market influences continue to drive job creation in Oklahoma.

One is an aging population. As the nation’s Baby Boomers begin to retire, it’s anticipated their growing need for health care services will drive a growing need for a variety of health-related specialists.

The other is technology. Business leaders use technology to boost efficiency, regardless of what industry they might be in.

Those influences stand out when considering what state labor officials expect will be Oklahoma’s fastest-growing occupational fields through 2024. A revised list was released Monday by the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission’s Economic Research & Analysis Division.

It shows programmers and operators for computer-controlled metal and plastic machine tool equipment top of the list, with expected growth rates of 38 and 37.3 percent, respectively.

The next fastest-growing occupation is forecast to be an operations research analyst, which is someone who uses advanced mathematical and analytical methods to help organizations investigate complex issues, identify and solve problems, and make better decisions.

Analysts typically have a degree in operations research, management science, analytics, math, engineering, computer science, or another

technical or quantitative field. Its expected growth rate is 36.6 percent.

Another occupational field expected to quickly grow, the data says, is cartographers and photogrammetrists, which is expected to grow 35.7 percent. A photogrammetrist is someone who makes maps using aerial photographs, satellite images, and light-imaging detection and ranging technology to build models of the Earth’s surface and its features to create maps.

Statisticians are next, followed by occupational therapy assistants, physical therapist aides, hearing aid specialists, personal care aides and industrial machinery mechanics.

Granted, total jobs numbers in some of these occupational fields are small, which skews the expected percentage of growth over time higher.

Lynn Gray, the director of economic research and analysis at the Oklahoma Employment Security Commission, said technological and demographic influences are making themselves felt throughout the state’s economy.

Gray said you can see it in various industries, including manufacturing, oil and gas and others.

“It’s a never-ending competition to come up with the best recipe, trying to find today’s most efficient way of combining human and physical capital to make your product or to provide your service,” Gray said. “That does evolve.” Gray said technological advances sometimes are implemented by businesses out of necessity as they look for ways to survive.

He used the state’s oil and gas economy as an example, where companies in 2017 are having to compete in an environment where they are only making about half what they did in 2014, and are turning to technology to help them produce what they were before using fewer people.

Manufacturing businesses have been implementing technology into their programs over a longer period of time as well for the same types of reasons, he said.

Russell Evans, executive director of the Steven C. Agee Economic Research and Policy Institute at Oklahoma City University’s Meinders School of Business, offered a similar take on the numbers.

“The place to be is where demand is growing and innovation is happening,” Evans said. “The health care industry is right there.”

Because the nation’s Baby Boomer generation is beginning to retire, Evans said the expectation is health care services needs are going to go up.

He added that another expectation is that health care will continue to become technologically more complex.

“That will provide greater roles for telemedicine, database management, or statistical applications like predictable analytics,” he said.