SDG Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth

You are probably aware of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. As a High School College Admissions and Career Guidance Counselor, you can play an important role toward achieving GlobalGoal 8, especially the target of full employment and decent work for all. You can help by providing students with data-driven advice about the jobs of the future. It’s important for students to think about their future careers not only in light of their interests, but also in light of which jobs are on the rise.

6 out of 10 workers will require training before 2027

The Future of Jobs Report by the World Economic Forum is one of the best publications that can help you provide students with scientific advice. It is a yearly publication, and the most recent version was published on May 2023. It brings together the collective perspectives of 803 companies, employing more than 11.3 million workers – across 27 industry clusters and 45 economies from all world regions. One of the most striking findings of the report is that 6 out of 10 workers will require training before 2027.This should give you an idea about the pace at which things are moving, and how drastic the landscape of the job market could be changing in the coming few years.

Cashiers, Waiters, Farmers, and Chief Executives are on the list of occupations with the largest job declines

You may have guessed that cashiers are on the list, but have you guessed that waiters and farmers are also on the list? How about Chief Executives? This is why you want reliable data and not intuition as the basis of your career guidance. One of the best resources that you can refer to is the Occupational Outlook Handbook by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, particularly the Employment Projections (EP) which provides information about the US labor market for 10 years in the future. The Handbook is only about the US labor market, but it is still a very good resource that gives you insights into future trends regardless of where you are.

The 2022-2032 Employment Projections can definitely inform your high school students’ decisions when they start planning for their future careers. It gives an idea about which jobs are growing, and which jobs are declining.

Healthcare and Tech are on the rise while Sales and Administrative occupations are declining

Let’s start with a macro-level picture of which occupation groups have the fastest percent growth, and which ones have the highest negative growth.

 

The fastest growing occupations

Now, let’s look more closely at the specific job titles with the highest percent growth, and let’s examine the median 2022 wage for these job titles. The top 3 places are: Wind Turbine Service Technicians, Nurse Practitioners, and Data Scientists. This is not very surprising because we know from the previous graph that healthcare and tech jobs are on top of the list of the most growing professions. We also know from the Future of Jobs report by WEF that green jobs are expected to grow more rapidly than other jobs which explains the presence of Wind Turbine Service Technicians on the top of the list.

Healthcare, tech and green jobs dominate the list

If we reorganize the treemap by occupation group, we’ll realize that 26 of the fastest growing jobs come from one of three categories; healthcare jobs (16), technology jobs (8), and green jobs (2). Looking closer at the list above reveals that there is a big discrepancy in  the median annual wage among the the 30 fastest growing jobs. Computer and Information Research Scientists make a median annual wage of $36,620 in 2022, while Home Health and Personal Care Aides make only $30,180.

The top 10 paying jobs in the fastest growing occupations list

You are probably curious to know which fast growing jobs make the most money. Below is a list of the top 10 jobs in median annual wage among the 30 fastest growing jobs in the US. This list is now completely dominated by healthcare and tech jobs with equal share for both.

 

Below is the full list of the fastest growing jobs ordered from the highest median annual wage to the lowest, with the expected percent increase between 2022 and 2032. It looks like Nurse Practitioners will enjoy very high demand (45%) and a very high median pay ($121,610).

 

STEM vs no-STEM

It’s probably clear by now that there is a huge gap in demand and pay between jobs in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), and non-STEM jobs.

STEM jobs are growing at 4.7X the rate of Non-STEM jobs.

 

 

STEM jobs are getting paid 2.1X as much as Non-STEM jobs.

 

 

It is in fact overwhelming to ask an 18-year old to choose his or her future career path, but isn’t that what happens when they write their college applications? Students are usually asked to select the major or at least the school (faculty) to which they would like to apply. While a student can always change his/her major in theory, things can get complicated in reality. Say a student is very interested in humanities and engineering. If the student decide to apply to a humanities major but later finds out about this pay gap between engineering and humanities after she is already enrolled in college, it may not be possible for her to transfer from the faculty of Arts and Sciences to the faculty of Engineering. So, it’s critical to provide students with all the information and allow them to take data-informed decisions that incorporate the future projections of the job market into consideration.