Nursing Offers a Healthy Employment Future

More than 3 million jobs in the health care industry will be created this decade, ranging from highly paid neurosurgeons to home health aids making barely above minimum wage. And more nursing jobs will be created in the next decade than in any other single profession. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that nearly 600,000 new jobs for registered nurses will be created by 2018.

Mike Jones hopes to get one of those jobs. Not long ago, he was working long hours in his father's construction business, and he wasn't happy. After a couple of hours on the phone with his brother, Jones made an unlikely career choice: He decided to become a nurse. If you're picking a new profession purely based on the numbers, nursing is a pretty sure bet.

"It's a large occupation," says Roger Moncarz, who does employment projections for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. "It's a growing occupation, and certainly there will be jobs there in the field over the next decade."

You can get an entry-level registered nurse job with just three years of college. And Moncarz says the median wage for a registered nurse is $62,450, putting it among the highest wage-earning professions.

"The fact that the wages are pretty high also sort of separates it from many occupations that would be growing," Moncarz says. "The median wage for all occupations was about $32,000, so the $62,400 is a decent wage."

Source: National Public Radio, Tamara Keith, 1/6/10