Where the Jobs Are Now

The following is an excerpt from Where the Jobs Are Now: The Fastest-Growing Industries and How to Break Into Them.

Maybe there was a time when you could post your résumé on Monster.com and sit back and wait for the offers to come flooding in, but that time is long gone. In today’s economic climate, that’s like waiting for the job fairy to come and tap you on the head with a magic wand. Well, guess what? There is no job fairy. That’s what I call a reality-based wake-up call, and one I’ve repeated time and time again to the thousands of people I’ve spoken to as a career coach and strategic advisor. What it means is, you can’t afford to be passive and wait around for the jobs to come back, because a lot of them won’t. It’s time to take control of your career again.

The way to take control is to go where the growth is. It’s not hopeless out there, even though it feels like it sometimes. There are choices you can make that will improve your situation. They may be tough choices, but whoever said the important things in life are easy?

It’s not just that the growth industries are the only ones that are still standing strong amid the rubble of the recession. There are other benefits to working at a growth industry, too. Chief among them is the fact that you are far more likely to have a positive employment experience at a business that’s part of a growing field instead of a shrinking one. Workers are more likely to receive raises and promotions, because when a business grows, employers need more workers to step up and fill the higher jobs. Similarly, workers in growth industries are more likely to have better, more robust benefits packages available to them, as well as perks like subsidized gym membership and transportation reimbursement plans. It’s not like anyone’s desperately trying to quit Google, right? Nor am I seeing any health-care workers fleeing through the doors of Mount Sinai Hospital.

People want to stay employed in growth industries because, by its very definition, working in a growth industry is better than working anywhere else, and that inevitably leads to a happier, more productive career.

Think of your career as if it were a business. You don’t see any businesses out there spending all their time trying to find the customers with no money, or who have so little money that they can’t spend it on that business’s products, do you? Of course not. A company like that wouldn’t last two seconds. Instead, businesses know they need to target customers who’ve got the money to spend. There’s no reason you shouldn’t treat your career the same way. Why chase a job in a shrinking industry, where benefits packages are being cut and there’s no room for advancement, when you can go where the growth opportunities are instead?

The industries that are still hiring are the ones that weren’t hit all that hard to begin with, namely, the service industries. According to the BLS, service occupations are projected to have the largest number of total job openings, 12.2 million by 2016, with 60 percent of those openings coming from worker replacement needs alone as the baby-boomer generation heads toward retirement. Just take a look at the job growth numbers for the 18 highlighted in this book and you’ll see what I’m talking about:

• Health care. 21.7 percent, or 3,000,000 new jobs created by 2016—the number one fastest growing industry in the nation
• Biotechnology. 24 percent, or 48,000 new jobs created by 2016
• Education. 3.5 percent, or 479,000 new jobs created by 2016
• Green energy. 25 percent, or up to 5,000,000 new jobs created by 2020
• Government. 4.8 percent, or nearly 1,000,000 new jobs created by 2016—the nation’s largest employer
• Security. Hundreds of thousands of new jobs created by 2016 in both government and the private sector, including even more in classified departments and agencies whose numbers aren’t made public
• Information technology. 24 percent, or 872,000 new jobs created by 2016
• Entrepreneurship. 6 million new businesses a year, 26 percent of the workforce turning to freelance and contract work, and independent niche consulting growing by 5.9 percent
• Accounting. 15 percent annually over the next decade, or 150,000 new jobs created every year
• Customer service. 25 percent, or 545,000 new jobs created by 2016
• Dental hygiene. 30 percent, or 50,000 new jobs created by 2016
• Engineering. A collective 11 percent, or 160,000 new jobs created by 2016
• Finance. 41 percent growth in personal financial advisors, or 72,000 new jobs created by 2016, and 34 percent growth in financial analysts, or 75,000 new jobs
• Firefighting. 12 percent, or 43,000 new jobs created by 2016
• Insurance. 7.4 percent, or 148,000 new jobs created by 2016
• Law. 11 percent growth in attorneys, or 84,000 new jobs created by 2016, and 22 percent growth in paralegals, or 53,000 new jobs
• Social work. A collective 22 percent, or 132,000 new jobs created by 2016
• Veterinary medicine. 35 percent growth in veterinarians, or 22,000 new jobs created by 2016, and 41 percent in vet techs, or 29,000 new jobs

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the doom-and-gloom numbers being reported in the news every day. It’s also easy to get overwhelmed when presented with a multitude of career options like the ones you’ll find in this book. So it’s important to remember amid all the noise and numbers that, in the end, you’re only looking for one job.

Yours.

Comments

[James]

I work in HR for the FAA and 4.8% doesn't reflect the real amount of hiring that's going to be going on. Something like 60% of the government's workforce will be retirement eligible within the next decade or so. Finding enough qualified people to fill those positions is going to be a real challenge.

[jim]

Some of those industries are growing slower than population growth. Population growth is ~1% per year so in 2016 you should have about 6% growth just due to increase in population.

[Budgeting in the Fun Stuff]

Cool. Customer service is my specialty (sort of) and I've recently looked into social work...good back up plans.

[vga]

When was this written? I'm not entirely sure this guy knows what he is talking about. As for biotech (my area), the pharmaceutical section has been hemorrhaging jobs like crazy. To the tune of more than 60,000 in 2009! 24% growth in the next 5 years? Get real. With all the mergers, the impending health care reform (or not, no one is really sure) and the lousy economy, we'll be lucky if there is any growth in the next 3 years.

[FMF]

vga --

Copyright for the book is 2010.

[vga]

It must have actually been written back in early 2009 or late 2008, because like I said, biotech or at least the pharmaceutical aspect of it, isn't going anywhere for a while. Which really makes me sad, since that's my field that I spent years and years of time studying and training for.

[Tim]

My field of Biotechnology (Agriculture) seems to be growing well. I know that my company, and indeed my particular group, currently has several open positions.

[Delphine]

I don't know about other fields, but I do know about law and government. I think it's kind of laughable for law and government to be on the list when jurisdictions are slashing jobs left and right. (City of LA is talking about cutting 1,000 people, Reno's transportation authority is cutting entire departments, City of San Jose's going through their 4th round of lay offs.) If you follow news in the law world you'd find lawyers are losing jobs by the thousands too and are advising people against going into law. Some joke about new Yale graduates that won't get anything better than doing administration work, assuming they're lucky enough to get hired. A Georgetown graduate recently put his diploma up for sale as a joke to vent his frustration.

Come to think of it, teachers are losing jobs by the thousands too.

A part of these statistics are not based on reality.

[JaymEsch]

Course, there's no one to help those of us with special circumstances. I have incurable Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I'm medicated, but that just lets me leave the house. I can't travel, I can't work with people, I can't work physical labor, and so on. I was denied disability because I can "watch a TV show". I do not want to, nor can I, move.

My career was niche (virtual reality development) and does not translate to other web or computer jobs. I'm 38, so already facing age discrimination in relationship to those right out of college.

I can't go to school- I have a degree and can't get a Pell Grant, and can't get a loan because my credit was destroyed by a former employer failing to pay me wages owed before going bankrupt.

I can't network, as I can't meet new people or go to new/strange places.

So I ask, what can *I* do to get income? Been working on it 8 years so far with no success.

[VT]

Government's a growth industry? Not in my state. (and no, I don't live in California.)

[BD]

I hope they're right about Accounting. That's what I chose to go back to school for, since my current degree is worthless and I haven't been able to find steady work for 5 years. I'll be starting this fall..whee! I sure hope it pays off.

To JaymEsch - Could you go back to school and just take one class at a time? I found out that if one already has a degree, you don't have to do all the GE stuff again, just the core classes for your major. I can't afford a full load, so I'm taking one class at a time, til I can afford more. It's better than nothing!