Every year, U.S. News & World Report ranks the top 100 jobs in several industries. For 2013, six of the top 10 are jobs in health care.
The magazine uses a number of factors to rank jobs, including employment rate, median salary, growth volume and work-life balance. Along with technology jobs, health care jobs stand out from the crowd by offering the right mix of those variables.
As the report noted in its rankings, and official government statistics confirm, graduates with health care degrees are having an easier time finding employment than much of the rest of the population.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), health care occupations make up two of the top three occupations with the most expected job growth through the end of this decade. Health care support occupations will rise by nearly 3.5 million between 2010 and 2020, while practitioners and technical jobs within health care will grow by 26 percent over the same time period.
Though registered nurse (RN) is the No. 2 overall top job in U.S. News and World Report, and BLS forecasts show 26 percent employment growth by 2020, the report also hints that nabbing an immediate job isn’t necessarily easy for new RNs fresh out of school. Though the aging Baby Boomer generation is a major cause for the nursing shortage, many of those same Baby Boomers are nurses who are currently delaying retirement.
By contrast, those with advanced nursing degrees are reporting an easier time landing jobs after graduation. RNs with a bachelor’s degree in nursing (BSN) have better job prospects than those with just an associate’s degree, according to the government’s statistics. Even more in-demand are RNs with advanced-practice degrees, including clinical nurse specialists, nurse anesthetists, nurse-midwives, and nurse practitioners. Nurses with these postgraduate degrees are reported to earn salaries 30 to 35 percent higher than other registered nurses, according to the magazine’s report.
Physician assistant, another position requiring a master’s degree, is expected to be one of the fastest-growing careers, as well; the BLS expects job growth to be at 30 percent between 2010 and 2020. That equates to an additional 24,700 jobs over the 10-year period. The growth for this comes as more physicians move into specialty areas, leaving a gap in primary health care providers — physicians assistants will step in to fill that gap.
Additionally, growth will continue as more states allow those assistants to take on greater responsibilities and perform more procedures, in part because they are more cost-effective for companies than physicians.
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