Glossary
What the acronyms and terms on this site mean, in plain words.
Acronyms
- BLS · U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
- The federal agency that measures jobs, pay, and prices. Most numbers on this site come from it.
- OEWS · Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics
- BLS's yearly survey of employers on how many people work in each job and what they're paid.
- O*NET · Occupational Information Network
- The U.S. Department of Labor's database of what each job involves: tasks, skills, and interests.
- OOH · Occupational Outlook Handbook
- BLS's free guide to hundreds of careers: what the work is like, how to get in, and the outlook.
- SOC · Standard Occupational Classification
- The government's code for each job, such as 29-1141 for registered nurses.
- CIP · Classification of Instructional Programs
- The government's code for each field of study, such as 51.3801 for nursing.
- NCES · National Center for Education Statistics
- The U.S. Department of Education's statistics office.
- BEA · U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis
- The federal agency that measures the economy, including how expensive each place is.
- QCEW · Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages
- BLS's count of nearly every job covered by unemployment insurance, by industry and place, from employers' tax filings.
- RPP · Regional Price Parities
- BEA's measure of how expensive a state or metro area is compared with the U.S. average (100).
Terms
- Median
- The middle value: half earn more, half earn less. Less thrown off by a few very high earners than an average.
- Percentile (top 10%, middle half)
- “Top 10% earn over $X” means 1 in 10 people in the job earns more than $X. The middle half is everyone between the 25th and 75th percentile.
- Early-career earnings
- What graduates of a degree program earned 1 and 4 years after finishing (College Scorecard). Not the same as a career's median, which covers workers at every experience level.
- All workers (career pay)
- Career pay on this site is the median for everyone in the job, from new hires to people with decades of experience (BLS). Starting pay is usually lower.
- Projected growth
- BLS's estimate of how much the number of jobs will change over 10 years, here from 2025 to 2035. A forecast, not a promise.
- Openings per year
- Jobs BLS expects to come open each year on average, from growth plus people retiring or changing careers.
- Typical education
- The education BLS says most people need to start the job. Some people enter with more or less.
- Net price
- What a college costs after grants and scholarships, including housing and food.
- Concentration (location quotient)
- How much more common a job or industry is in a place than in the U.S. overall. 2.0 means twice the national share of local jobs; 1.0 means average.
- Jobs per 1,000
- Of every 1,000 jobs in a place, how many are in this occupation.
- Cost of living adjustment
- Pay divided by how expensive a place is (BEA's RPP), so pay in different places can be compared fairly.