Where the Jobs Will be This Decade

The first decade of this century ended as a disaster for employment. Since the recession began two years ago, the U.S. has lost more than 7 million jobs.

Just to regain the jobs we've lost will be a huge challenge, says Harvard University labor economist Lawrence Katz. "We would need well over 300,000 [jobs] a month for four years in a row just to make up what we've lost in the last couple of years," Katz says. There are very few periods in U.S. history when job growth has been that strong.

"So we're in a very deep hole," Katz says. "A normal recovery will not get us there for a very long time."

Katz thinks it could take half a decade or more just to get to the employment levels we had two years ago. Still, he expects that during this new decade, the U.S. economy will eventually create 15 million new jobs, with the unemployment rate falling to around 5 percent. Projections for the next decade from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, BLS, suggest that elements of that basic trend will continue. They expect these 10 occupations will provide the greatest number of new jobs over the next decade.

1. Registered nurses
2. Home health aides
3. Customer service representatives
4. Food preparation and serving workers
5. Personal and home care aides
6. Retail salespersons
7. Office clerks
8. Accountants
9. Nursing aides, orderlies and attendants
10. Postsecondary teachers

Once again, the BLS is projecting that the health care sector will be a leader in producing new jobs: 4 million of them, including high-skill, high-paying jobs like doctors and nurses. The service sector, which includes health care, is expected to produce a whopping 96 percent of all new jobs, while manufacturing employment continues to shrink. For job seekers, nursing combines a huge number of openings with high pay — a median wage of more than $62,000 a year.

Source: National Public Radio, John Ydstie, 1/4/10