Forecasting and Planning: What's the Difference?

Executive Summary 

In the next ten years (2010-2020), the economy of the United States is projected to experience an employment increase totaling over 20million new jobs; this employment growth is expected from close to 143.1 million to over 163.5 million. Apparently, this increase in14.3% growth highlights an assumption of a fully employed economy in 2020. Of all the 749 occupations, only 92 are predicted to decline, promising an excessive increase in community, social, healthcare and personal care careers ( Lockard, 2012) . According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the state of California took all top three spots for best employment growth among larger countries in April 2017 highlighting it as one of the greatest beneficiaries of this increase. Chern’s, a retail store seeking to expand in California has to analyze and compare their business practices and strategies with the highlighted business and employment projections to successfully establish and gain from this forecast. 

Introduction 

Forecasting and planning are a common statistical task for businesses, organizations, and governments. It is a tool that plays out during decision making about planned production, transportation, resource allocation and management of personnel in conformity with guidance about long-term strategizing of plans. The processes of projecting and planning can be broken down in three different aspects. Forecasting entails considering available information and predicting the future as accurately as possible. Goals, which are the projections and things that the entity desires to see.Finally planning, which is a response to the preparation of the forecasts and goals highlighted ( Kirkham & Hsu , 2015). Forecasting and planning require several approaches to predict uncertain events. Chern’s has to study employment supply and demand projections, trends and traits in the market as well as general demographics of California before they come up with the proper plans and strategies for employment and production. 

Employment and Salary 

Considering any industry, projections about employment lead to changes in accordance with the overtime of occupational employment, which postulates out of growth, technological changes and other factors in the market. The short tenure projections for jobs in California, which take two years are revised annually to produce long term forecasts (10 years) for employment. In all industries, predicted salaries and wages are distributed to occupations by the staffing patterns that are projected. An example is General level and operations manager who is expected to increase a total of 81,600 new jobs while on the other hand, translators and interpreters are projected to only add 24,600 new jobs (Bureau of Labor statistics, 2017). Moreover, operations managers whose salaries are bigger and are forecasted to grow significantly low by only 4.6 percent. These differences and changes provide Precise comparisons between the different occupations and their wages or salaries. 

Employment Trends 

In the last years, California added totals of 150,000 more new jobs averagely annually than previously believed ( Kirkham & Hsu , 2015). Such occurrences signal that economic growth in California is far outpaced in comparison to the rest of the nation. Notably, the fastest growing industries over the years have been in construction, the information sector, which is characterized by the entertainment industry and some parts of the tech industry in the Silicon Valley. There are indications of continued growth in areas of property, sales, and hotels, as data and findings are becoming more angled towards indicators that drive more economic growth and government revenues. However, some sectors that showed slow growth over the past years, including manufacturing, mining, and logging, together with the now-struggling oil industry. 

Female Demographic Group 

Statistics concentrations compare the different percentages of groups that are represented in the various job categories to look for rates of concentration in the workforce. In a comparison of the male and females, it is notable that there is some semblance of discrimination against the women, with a total difference of 40% in preference to the men (Walkley, 2016). Men are considerably well placed in more managerial roles, positions of power and decision making in comparison to their counterparts the women. Although these observations cannot establish discrimination, they are notable and as such can be used to support evidence found by flow analysis and could amount to legal complications. 

Applicants Needed to Meet Projections 

Already in California, the workforce skills gap is a reality. Over the recent years, the demand and need for workers with a bachelor’s degree have grown. Although the percentage of employees with college degrees increased from 28 percent in the 1990s to 34 percent in the mid-2000s, and their wages rose substantially over the same period, the wages of less-educated workers have relatively been stagnant (Reed, 2010) . Such conditions inspire an increase in the demand for college-educated workers, yet growth in their supply has not been gradual and at a kept pace. Following the analysis on previous employee academics from different occupation fields, considering the continuation of recent trends, by 2020 college graduates will have an increase in demand and supply to occupy the employment sector. However, these would only account for 40 percent of the California workforce, which is less and unsatisfactory to the projected growth levels of the job market. 

Recommendations 

Chern’s is a retail store whose employees are expected to be talented, and provide knowledge and customer service on a daily basis, as well as strive to meet sales quotas and set targets. For Chern to triumph in California, it needs to develop a series of strategies in juxtaposed with the forecast trends and projections. They would require talent philosophies, set up a clear and precise human resource strategy as well as encourage commitment and staff training. The supply of skilled college workers in California is expected to drop increasing their demand. We recommend that Chern’s sets ups criteria to improve productivity and output for its employees and through this enhance their skills and in turn favor inside hiring.Chern’s should also instill a long term employee commitment through sign-on and retention bonuses as well as choosing whether to make staffing centralized or decentralized. 

References 

Bureau of Labor statistics, (2017). Employment projections . Retrieved from: https://www.bls.gov/emp/ 

Kirkham , C. & Hsu , T. (2015). Job growth in California soars , New York Times 

Lockard, B. (2012) Occupational employment projections to 2020 , retrievedfrom: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2012/01/art5full.pdf 

Reed, D. (2010) . California’s Future Workforce , Will There Be Enough College Graduates? Public Policy Institute of California. 

Walkley, K. (2016) Chern’s consultancy case , retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/KyleWalkley/cherns-case-study-59478955