Hot Jobs Influenced by Politics

A 2010 list of hot careers for graduates is out and there are some new categories as well as interesting links to politics. UC San Diego Extension just released its report of 14 niche industries where job prospects are high during this recession and it's getting nationwide play in Forbes.com.

New this year and number one on the list is health information technology. You could blame or credit the debate on Capitol Hill for that one.


Part of the health care reform discussion includes the process of "going digital" with all the information that's collected during the management of health care. 
 
There's a big gap, according to Henry Devries, primary author of the report, who says there are not enough people who are trained in managing information technology related to health care. Devries says there's a $400, 000 federal stimulus grant being used to train people in those jobs over the next two years.
 
President Obama's push to create more "green jobs" is in part what's fueling more training and majors in this field.
 
"Almost every single profession is turning green these days, " says Vicki Krantz, director of business and professional programs. From urban planners who focus on environmentally conscious construction to accountants who keep track of carbon dioxide emissions, this whole greening of jobs has added a new category to our everyday conversation. Blue collar jobs, white collar jobs...now it's green collar jobs.
 
Data mining too is big on the list. You don't need a hard hat for this job it's all about deciphering the masses upon masses of internet, web-related volumes of data. Homeland security is doing more "data mining" to decipher and sift through the "chatter" in the hunt for terrorists.
 
The information from the UC study was taken from the Department of Labor and the Bureau of Labor and Statistics as well as UCSD Extension's 22,500 students.
 
So it's not just a local study, since the stats were collected across the nation, it's perspective has a much broader range. 
 
San Diego State University also has some interesting preliminary results from a career survey it conducted of its graduates who've recently been hired.
 
This too has broad implications with a message of optimism for job seekers
 
Government jobs were the most popular on the list of employers, a big surprise says James Tarbox, director of the Career Services Center. It could be that the government workforce is getting close to retirement age, the baby boomers are leaving their careers, he adds. Tarbox says the federal government has been the most proactive recently, making themselves highly visible at their job fairs.
 
So what kind of majors are the feds interested in? International conflict resolution, engineering and business majors. Also foreign language majors who specialize in Farsi.
 
Although the unemployment figures are bleak, there are jobs to be had, you just have to bee willing and able to adjust to the
changing landscape of opportunities.

 
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