Occupational Distribution in Arkansas
Occupational Distribution in Arkansas
This brief article uses data from the US Census Bureau American Community Survey, 5-Year estimates for 2020 to look at the occupational distribution of full-time, year-round civilian workers in Arkansas1. According to this survey, there were 967,416 full-time, year-round civilian workers distributed in 17 major occupational groups. The majority of Arkansans (56.1%) were employed in five major occupational groups. The top two occupational groups- “Management, business and financial” and “Office and administrative support”, employed more than one fourth of Arkansans (27.06%) and the next three groups- “Education, legal, community service, arts, and media”, “Production”, and “Sales and related”, accounted for another 29.04%. Graph 1 below shows the complete occupational distribution.
Occupational distribution by Gender
During the survey period, 55.3 percent of all full-time, year-round civilian workers in Arkansas were males (535,199) and 44.7 percent were females (432,217). The occupational distribution for these two groups were considerably different from each other. As the data in Graph 2 indicates, most occupational groups in Arkansas are gender-dominated. The majority of workers in “Office and administrative support”, “Education, legal, community service, arts, and media”, and “Healthcare practitioners and technical occupations”, continue to be females. On the other hand, traditionally blue-collar occupations, such as “Construction and extraction”, “Installation, maintenance, and repair”, “Transportation”, “Material Moving”, and “Production” continue to be male-dominated. A few exceptions to this gender-dominated pattern were, “Sales and related”, “Management business and financial”, and “Food preparation and serving related” occupations, where gender diversity was evident. Graph 2, shows the complete occupational distribution by gender.
1 The US Census Bureau uses the 2018 Standard Occupational Codes (SOC) system to classify workers into occupational categories based on the main work performed. The 2018 SOC includes 867 detailed occupational codes, which are hierarchically organized into four levels, starting from specific occupations to clusters of occupations. More information can be found at: https://www.bls.gov/soc/2018/soc_2018_user_guide.pdf
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