What occupations will have the most openings in the next decade? America's Career InfoNet provides the projected number of annual job openings during the period of 2006-2016. Below are the 15 jobs projected to have the most annual openings. They are also the only jobs projected to have 50,000 or more such openings.
Retail salespersons (193,521)
Cashiers (166,437)
Waiters and waitresses (153,712)
Customer service representatives (115,840)
Registered nurses (100,079)
Office clerks (99,080)
Combined food preparation and serving workers, including fast food (92,656)
Laborers and freight, stock, and material movers, hand (82,304)
Janitors and cleaners (80,184)
Postsecondary teachers (66,178)
Child care workers (64,648)
Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks (59,430)
Elementary school teachers (54,544)
Truck drivers, heavy and tractor-trailer (52,297)
Personal and home care aides (51,855)
The highest-paid occupations on the list are registered nurses (#5) and Postsecondary teachers (#10) both identified by America's Career InfoNet as being in the highest "Earnings Quartile," or earning more than $43,600. (Earnings Quartiles separate wage and salary information of people employed in an occupation or industry into four parts.) Elementary school teachers (#13) and truck drivers (#14) earn between $28,580 to $43,590, while individuals in the remaining 11 occupations on the list earn $28,570 or less.
America's Career Infonet (www.acinet.org) data came from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Office of Occupational Statistics and Employment Projections.
