Prediction is Tough, Especially about the Future

Every decade the Bureau of Labor Statistics issues predictions about job growth or losses in certain professions, and their latest predictions are shown above.

Sadly, they are often wrong. Business Insider ran the numbers on actual job growth over the 2002 to 2012 time period and compared it to the last round of predictions. They found that they were a little off. (Above; prediction in blue, actual in red.) They were right about two big categories, since they predicted big growth in health care and steady growth in in leisure and hospitality, but that was pretty obvious, wasn't it? The big growth in "mining" mainly has to do with the boom in fracking for oil and natural gas.