Biomedical engineer, network systems and data communications analyst,
home health aide: those are the top three career fields expected to
hire workers between now and 2018, says a
story tucked into
The New York Times Education Life supplement last Sunday. The
Times
pulled data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics once every two
years. This list comes from November 2009, so it’s not exactly current,
but it nevertheless provides some rough guidance for young people trying
to plan their studies and career direction. The BLS will put out a
fresh list in November of this year.
The
Times piece includes a link to the BLS’s table, which you can find
here. There are also links to lists of the fields with the largest job growth
here, and the occupations with the greatest declines,
here.
The top three professions adding the most jobs: registered nurses, home
health aides and customer service representatives. The fields with the
biggest job drops, perhaps not surprisingly: farmers and ranchers,
sewing machines operators, and office order clerks.
Helpfully, the
Times lists approximate salaries and brief
explanations of why the top fields are growing, and also the necessary
education required. Biomedical engineers, for instance, are in great demand by device makers
who produce things like artificial limbs and imagining machines, and
companies looking to do gene testing and to make new drugs. The BLS says
workers need only earn a bachelor’s degree but the
Times finds
that a master’s degrees is required. The median salary in this
profession: $82,550. Network and data analysts make an average of
$76,560 and will be working on the explosion in mobile data, tablets and
cloud computing apps, and the need for managing ever greater swaths of
data. The BLS says you can go into this field with a bachelor’s degree.
Given the aging baby boom generation, it’s not surprising that home
health aides come in third, and that the salary isn’t high, a median of
$21,620, says the
Times, though it can be higher in more affluent areas. You don’t need a college degree for this field.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2011/04/20/jobs-of-the-future/
Have you made up your mind? What do you want to become in the future? Tell me in 200words.