The short answer
Projected growth is the change in an occupation’s employment over the projection period. Projected annual openings combine that employment change with the need to replace workers who leave the labor force or transfer to another occupation, expressed as an annual average. Both describe the longer term; neither counts vacancies available today.
Why a slower-growing field can have more openings
Think of a small specialty expanding quickly and a large, established occupation with roughly stable employment. The specialty can have the higher growth rate while the larger occupation has more projected openings as workers retire or move into other occupations.
A move to another employer within the same occupation does not count as an occupational transfer in this calculation. Annual openings are about entry into the occupation, not every job change within it.
Read the pair before choosing a training path
Growth helps you judge the projected direction of employment. Annual openings help you compare the scale of expected entry opportunities. Neither tells you how many qualified applicants will compete for those opportunities.
- Considering training: read growth and annual openings together, then check qualifications, training costs and local employers.
- Choosing where to apply this month: look at current vacancies and recent hiring conditions; a decade-long average cannot locate today’s openings.
- Concerned about automation: read the occupation-specific explanation and evidence about changing tasks. A growth rate alone is not an AI or automation risk measure.
Check the horizon and the explanation
BLS projections describe a ten-year period under stated assumptions. They are not a forecast of each year’s business cycle. The annual openings figure is an average over that period, not a promise that the same number of jobs will open each year.
The projection date matters when you are evaluating a recent technology or economic change. Read the accompanying analysis to see what it assumes; the headline growth rate alone cannot tell you why employment is expected to change.
How the site uses these figures
Growth and annual openings feed the Long-Term Outlook component of the Job Market Health score. Occupation pages show the published projection horizon so you can keep that longer-term view separate from monthly hiring conditions.
Takeaways
- Growth describes employment change; annual openings also account for people leaving the occupation.
- Read both when comparing fields, along with the requirements for entering them.
- Projected openings are not current vacancies, and projected growth is not an automation-risk score.
Sources behind this guide
- Employment ProjectionsEmployment Projections, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
- OEWSOccupational Employment and Wage Statistics, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Put it to use
Look up a specific job to see its Job Market Health score, trend, wage context and outlook. Search occupations, or read how the score is built on the methodology page.
Keep reading
- How to tell if a job market is healthyHealthy is not the same as large or well paid. It means employers are actively adding people, separations are not spiking, and the occupation has room to keep hiring.
- How to read occupational wage dataA published median gives you a pay benchmark, not a salary quote. To use it well, match the occupation and location, look at the spread, and check which parts of compensation the estimate includes.