This report reviews recent population and manpower projections and examines how they take into account certain unexpected shifts in demographic, social, and economic behavior. It also assesses how well the particular circumstances, trends, and problems of the nation's major minority groups have been brought into the purview of the projection process. The Bureau of Labor Statistics prepares its manpower projections by applying assumed future labor force participation rates to population projections. This author notes the fallibility of these statistics, mentioning the unpredictability of such relevant factors as epidemic diseases and immigration trends. Other areas related to the forming of manpower projections include national fertility, the fertility of ethnic minority groups, such as blacks and Mexican Americans, and demographic movement between urban and non-urban areas. The social and economic trends involved in these dynamics are complex and variable. The author of this report states that the entire effort of manpower projections is too narrowly conceived. This is evident, first, in the fact that most of the projection effort is concentrated toward producing a single best forecase rather than a number of alternative possibilities. Second, the narrowness of the approach is obvious in that there is no closely articulated continuing research effort. (Author/GC)