The Occupation-Industry Matrix Gives a Labor Check on Census Numbers

We looked yesterday at the tobacco industry.  I know, some of you are saying, "but that was the last post of the year."  Changed my mind, fickle like that. 

The Census Bureau gave us 2015 job numbers for the tobacco industry of 13,872. 

Geographic area name	2012 NAICS code	Meaning of 2012 NAICS code	Year	Number of establishments	Paid employees for pay period including March 12 (number)
United States	3122	Tobacco manufacturing	2015	160	13,872

BLS told us that there were 600 hand laborers and 100 hand packers.  To get those numbers, we used the employment projections sorted by occupation and scrolled to the line for NAICS 312200, tobacco manufacturing.  The BLS provides another useful tool that checks that 13,872 and tells us at a glance how the industry staffs itself:  the occupation-industry matrix by industry.  The industry sort has the line for tobacco manufacturing and the XLSX link to the data. 

BLS reports 2016 industry employment of 12,900 jobs.  That is less than 10% difference, looking at 2015 versus 2016.  BLS projects that the industry will continue to shrink to about 8,000 jobs in 2026.  BLS reports the data for the industry in red, to tell us without reading that this industry is going up in smoke. 

The industry sort gives additional data that makes sense of occupational data from the occupation sort and CBP.  By making sense of the data, I mean ripping the lies out of the vocational expert's mouth.