FORECASTING EMPLOYMENT AND POPULATION 



2.1 SOME COMMONLY USED PROCEDURES 



Processes of varying sophistication are used to forecast OCS 

 development-related activities and their effects, including those of 

 secondary development. The more complex analyses, typified by those in 

 environmental impact statements prepared for OCS lease sales and proposed 

 major facilities, often use one or more of the following: input/output 

 analysis, the Harris model, or development scenarios. 



2.1.1 Input/output Analysis 



The purpose of input/output analysis is to provide an accounting system 

 to trace the flow of goods, services, and money from one sector of the 

 economy to all other sectors. It does this by describing the interrelation- 

 ships among all the sectors within a specific region at a specific time and 

 expressing these interrelationships as mathematical coefficients. Thus, if 

 one sector of a regional economy generates a certain amount of activity, 

 the effects of that activity on other sectors can be estimated by applying 

 the coefficients for those sectors to the numbers describing the known 

 activity. 



For OCS-related forecasting, selection of the region to be considered, 

 and use of coefficients appropriate to that specific region may be the 

 most important considerations. Economic structure varies considerably 

 within the country, making the use of national coefficients for industrial 

 classifications potentially misleading. For example, coefficients for the 

 marine mining sector, which includes offshore petroleum development, are 

 significantly different for Louisiana, which has a well -developed offshore 

 industrial base, than for the United States as a whole. 



The result of an input/output analysis indicates the demand an 

 industrial activity will exert on other sectors of the economy, but does 

 not indicate employment requirements or induced community effects. 



2.1.2 Bureau of Land Management Analysis 



The Bureau of Land Management has used a sophisticated economic model, 

 known as the Harris Model, to examine the need for new industrial 

 facilities in a region. The model uses industrial interrelationships to 

 portray ties among the industries of a defined region; like input/output 

 analysis, it does not directly indicate induced community effects. Among 

 the basic items considered in using the model are population movements, 

 demand for products, costs of production and transportation, and industrial 

 input/output coefficients (from input/output analysis) [2]. These are used 



