The Best Jobs For Young People

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The Best Jobs For Young People




It’s hard out there for a young person today. For the last few years, youth in the U.S. have been barraged with bad news: An unemployment rate that reached 18.1% for the 16-to-24 set in 2011, rising education costs, shifting market demands and declining middle-class jobs.

Providing a light in the fog, jobs expert Laurence Shatkin, Ph.D., author of just-released 150 Best Jobs for Your Skills, crunched the data to uncover the 15 best jobs for young people in America today. He first examined jobs with a large concentration of workers ages 16 to 24 (at least 15%), which represent more opportunities for initial entry and upward mobility, and ranked them by a combination of median annual earnings, the job’s projected growth and the annual number of openings, as tracked by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The list is dominated by good-paying health-care jobs with flexible hours, and many require less than a bachelor’s degree.

Topping the list at No. 1, dental assistant came out as the best job for young people in the current market. The position requires only moderate-term on-the-job training and entails preparing patients and dental equipment and keeping track of inventory and medical records. Earning $33,470 annually, 17.6% of these workers are younger than 25, and the function is increasingly in demand. The job is expected to grow 35.7% and boasts 16,100 openings each year.

Almost half of the jobs on the list are in health care, the fastest-growing sector in the economy. Medical assistants (No. 3) earn $28,860 and have 21,780 openings each year; physical therapist assistants (No. 4) earn $49,690 and are expected to grow by 33.3%; home health aides (No. 5) earn $20,560 and feature 55,270 annual openings; pharmacy technicians (No. 7) earn $28,400 and have 18,200 openings; and surgical technologists (No. 8) earn $39,920 and are growing by 25.3%.

Many jobs on the list also feature strong job security. “Almost every one of these requires physical contact,” says Shatkin. “You have to show up to do them. So they’re not being shipped overseas, and they can’t be done by a robot.”

Several of the positions require manual labor or physical fitness, something that young people are especially equipped for. Fitness trainers and aerobics instructors (No. 6) earn $31,090 and require only previous experience. Construction laborers (No. 10) make $29,280 and are trained on the job, needing just good health and basic equipment and maintenance skills. Coaches and scouts (No. 14) earn $28,340 and can leverage sports knowledge and a history as a student athlete to begin immediately working with school or professional sports teams.

For young workers, who are often pursuing higher education or still figuring out their career direction, most of these jobs require limited training, are easy to get into and can be done on a part-time basis. “The part-time option is good for people who want to attend classes while they’re doing them,” says Shatkin.

Most don’t have much advancement potential—except possibly customer service representatives (No. 9), which often feed into managerial positions—but Shatkin says they offer an opportunity to experience the environment of the job. Starter jobs like dental assistants or pharmacy technicians can serve as low-risk ways learn about the field before investing time and money into a professional education. And because they feature high turnover, there are typically tons of openings.

“Young people may not have figured out what their priorities are yet,” says Shatkin. “They may use these jobs to discover what they like and where they fit.”

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Source: www.forbes.com