Plenty Of Jobs, But … High-Paying Work Will Be Tougher To Find In Next Decade
Anyone looking for work in Idaho will find plenty available in the next decade, but jobs that pay well and have a future will be tougher to come by.
In a state with 469,000 workers, fewer than 500 jobs a year will open up in senior management, according to the Idaho Department of Employment. That’s one top management job for every 1,000 workers.
There are projected to be even fewer annual openings for nurses, engineers and teachers.
Even the number of openings in the Treasure Valley for semiconductor assemblers and electronics technicians is forecast to total only 361 a year.
The Employment Department says 26 professional or support occupations will need thousands of new workers by 2005. But the actual numbers of new doctors and lawyers, for example, is small - 180 and 500, respectively.
And while some traditional occupations will grow, their support staffs will grow faster. For example, the number of lawyers is supposed to increase 20 percent between 1992 and 2005. But paralegal jobs will rise 70 percent.
In some fields growth in particular types of jobs will be faster than others. Elementary-teacher positions, for example, will increase 23 percent. But secondary-teacher positions will increase 39 percent.
A college degree will be mandatory for most good jobs. But even that might not be enough to get an applicant’s foot in the door, said Jim Adams, chief of research for the Employment Department.
“You’ll probably need to know somebody,” Adams said.
Workers with limited or outdated skills and training will find good jobs particularly elusive.
The latest figures show that 37 percent of those employed in Idaho are in professional, technical and managerial positions. While that percentage is not small, it also means that roughly 63 percent of the available jobs generally require less skill or training.
According to the Employment Department, of 27 jobs projected to be in high demand the next 10 years, only five occupations require a college degree, or some type of collegelevel training.
Those jobs include general manager and top executives; secondary and elementary school teachers; registered nurses and bookkeeperaccountants.
The other 22 occupations are lowskill, low-paying positions.
Of the 10 most common jobs in Idaho, only general manager and top executive and bookkeeperaccountant positions require collegelevel training.
In the fastest-growing occupations - those in which at least 1,000 people are employed statewide and that are projected to experience 25 percent job growth in the next decade - the highest-paying jobs, such as nursing, all require college training.