In 2003, The BLS Predicted The Employment Growth Of 16 Different Industries - Here's How Those Predictions Turned Out

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report today on projected employment growth of different industries from 2012-2022.

But given the 10-year time frame, how accurate can BLS actually be? We took a look at the agency's predictions for 2002-2012 to find out.

It expected employment in the professional and business services sector to grow by 30 percent during that span. In education and health services, BLS projected a 26% increase in employment, an increase of almost seven million jobs.

In actuality, professional and business services grew 12.2% over that period. On education and health services, the BLS projection was almost exactly correct with employment growing 25.5% over the decade.*

The agencies biggest error was in mining where it expected a 12% decrease in employment. Job growth in the sector was 56.3% in that period.

Overall, BLS projected the economy to have 153 million jobs in 2012. We actually had only 145 million.

Check out how the Bureau's projections held up in all 16 industries:

*BLS industry categories changed slightly during the past 10 years. In 2002, there was one category for "education and health services." Now, there are two: "education services" and "health care and social assistance." We combined those two categories and labeled it the original BLS category "education and health services."