Insight
Current Demand by career field
How the near-term demand component and the composite score sit across the published SOC career fields, using medians so a few very large or very small occupations cannot move a field on their own.
Aggregation method
- Career field
- The published SOC major group an occupation belongs to, as grouped in the occupation directory. Occupations whose SOC code cannot be mapped are grouped as “Not classified” rather than dropped silently.
- Median Current Demand
- The middle published Current Demand component within the field, or the mean of the two middle values. Occupations without a published component are excluded, and the remaining count is shown.
- Above and below
- Counted against one clearly stated threshold: the median published score across every occupation in this release, 49. This is a distribution statement, not a judgment about any field.
Career fields in this release
| Career field | Occupations | Median Current Demand | Median score | Above release median | Below release median | At median |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture and engineering | 33 | 43 | 50 | 17 | 16 | 0 |
| Arts, design, entertainment, sports and media | 36 | 31 | 39 | 5 | 31 | 0 |
| Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance | 8 | 32 | 45 | 3 | 5 | 0 |
| Business and financial operations | 31 | 36 | 46 | 13 | 18 | 0 |
| Community and social service | 17 | 48 | 58 | 16 | 1 | 0 |
| Computer and mathematical | 19 | 32 | 42 | 4 | 15 | 0 |
| Construction and extraction | 56 | 42 | 41 | 14 | 41 | 1 |
| Educational instruction and library | 59 | 47 | 47 | 22 | 34 | 3 |
| Farming, fishing and forestry | 2 | 59 | 49 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Food preparation and serving | 16 | 32 | 47 | 5 | 10 | 1 |
| Healthcare practitioners and technical | 68 | 47 | 56 | 53 | 13 | 2 |
| Healthcare support | 17 | 47 | 56 | 14 | 3 | 0 |
| Installation, maintenance and repair | 46 | 50 | 51 | 32 | 12 | 2 |
| Legal | 7 | 34 | 47 | 2 | 4 | 1 |
| Life, physical and social science | 41 | 42 | 49 | 19 | 18 | 4 |
| Management | 35 | 38 | 54 | 31 | 3 | 1 |
| Office and administrative support | 42 | 38 | 35 | 4 | 38 | 0 |
| Personal care and service | 31 | 34 | 51 | 18 | 11 | 2 |
| Production | 103 | 64 | 47 | 42 | 55 | 6 |
| Protective service | 23 | 48 | 51 | 13 | 8 | 2 |
| Sales and related | 20 | 40 | 43 | 1 | 17 | 2 |
| Transportation and material moving | 44 | 54 | 49 | 22 | 22 | 0 |
Provenance
Computed from the frozen National Job Market Health release, July 2026. Current Demand is a JobMarketHealth derived component, not a government statistic; the underlying openings, hires and payroll figures are published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. See the methodology, data sources and how to cite. A companion reading of the two horizons is on Current Demand versus Long-Term Outlook.