New Survey of Occupational Requirements

There's a new survey in town: the Occupational Requirements Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, provides information about the physical demands, environmental conditions, education, training, and mental requirements of occupations in the United States. Here are some of the survey's first findings for all workers (and workers in specific occupations)...

• Workers at the average job spend 4.4 hours standing or walking (construction workers spend an average of 7 hours standing or walking).
• Workers at the average job spend 3.0 hours sitting.
• 48 percent of jobs require prior work experience (78.5 percent of architecture and engineering jobs require work experience, with an average length of 4.5 years).
• 47 percent of jobs require outdoor work (all landscaping and groundskeeping jobs require outdoor work and 88 percent require working outdoors constantly—defined as at least 67 percent of the work day).
• 31 percent of jobs have no minimum education requirement (the 57 percent majority of transportation and material moving jobs have no minimum requirement).
• 17.5 percent of jobs require at least a bachelor's degree (60 percent of management jobs require at least a bachelor's degree).  

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Requirement in the United States—2016