18 As you know, within our community affairs offices, the Federal Reserve devotes considerable effort to studying and promoting effective workforce development, so I am able to draw  17  Top occupations noted across all MSAs included the following: registered nurses; first-line supervisors of office and administrative support workers; sales representatives, wholesale and manufacturing; business operations specialists, sales representative services; general and operations managers; computer system analysts; automotive service technicians and mechanics; first-line supervisors of construction trades and extraction work; plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters; first-line supervisors of mechanics, installers; and construction laborers.
See Keith Wardrip, Kyle Fee, Lisa Nelson, and Stuart Andreason, Identifying Opportunity Occupations in the Nation’s Largest Metropolitan Economies, Federal Reserve Banks of Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Ohio (Cleveland: FSB of Cleveland), available at https://www.clevelandfed.org/newsroom-and-events/publications/special-reports/sr-20150909-identifyingopportunity-occupations.aspx. 18 For a broad summary of recent research and policy issues related to workforce development, see the 2015 publication Transforming U.S.