My youngest child is in Middle School now. Her brothers are all in their 20s and 30s and have well established careers, although not in the areas in which they expected to be working back when they left school.
She's pretty switched on and talks about her possible careers or jobs often. She's into the performing arts in a big way, but she's savvy enough to know that the careers in that area are pretty thin on the ground. Even teaching in the arts, means odd hours and night work.
So we were doing some research today, and here's what we found.
The predicted top thirty growth jobs in the next ten years according to this source...
http://www.boston.com/bostonworks/galleries/fastest_growing_jobs_2020?pg=31
..start with Vet at number 30 and finish with Personal Care Aide at number 1. Well we could almost have predicted that one with ageing in-laws AND a son with a disability, as well as history of pet ownership of all kinds, in our family.
Anything in medical research seems destined to grow as does medical technology.
Audiologist was in there as was Physiotherapist and Occupational Therapist as the ageing population continues to out survive previous generations, and medical care for those with disabilities continues to improve.
But then surprisingly, there were trades such as carpentry, stonemasonry, blockmasonry and so on, due to ageing of the few practitioners left in those fields of expertise.
So for all of us and our kids, there will be decisions to be made that may be significantly different to those of ten or twenty years ago as far as study and career options go.
It's also interesting I think, that anyone in the Personal Care industry as a support worker now, possibly has excellent prospects to build upon that with a career in training and development and so on, in years to come.
So if you were graduating high school soon, or if you have students who will be graduating between now and, say, 2020, where would your aspirations for yourself or for them, lie?
