Skip to main content
Join Now

< Back to All

Study projects over 8 million U.S. jobs will be created in the next five years

August 21, 2017

By Michael Burns, courtesy of SBAM Approved Partner ASE

CareerBuilder recently published a study that sees 8.1 million new jobs being added to the U.S. between this year and 2022. This will be slightly offset due to projections that in the same time frame over 302,000 jobs will go away. This creates a net U.S. job growth of 5% over the next five years. 

In the current U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics report there are currently 6.2 million job openings with 338,000 jobs in manufacturing and 225,000 jobs in construction going unfilled. These are not new jobs, but existing jobs that go unfilled.

Going forward, where will the job growth be? The study’s sponsor, CareerBuilder, projects new job growth will be fastest in those jobs that are related to science, technology, engineering, and math. However, this job growth is not projected to be in manufacturing and construction, which still leaves large talent gaps in those fields.

Surprisingly, low wage jobs are expected to have the highest net growth with just under 3 million jobs added. Low wage jobs are those making under $14.24/hr. That is a 5.57% increase for those categories of employment.

New high-wage jobs are projected to grow by over 2.7 million during this time.

Job losses are expected to hit middle-wage workers the hardest, and new jobs for this segment of the workforce will lag behind other job categories. The study’s authors define middle wage jobs as those between $14.25 and $23.23/hour.  Of jobs going away in the next five years, just under 50% of the 302,000 jobs lost will be middle-wage.  High paying jobs will account for 26% of job losses, and only 25% are expected to be from the low-wage category.

Middle-wage jobs being at greatest risk due to the rapid advancement in technology. According to Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder, this means, “Their only choices are adopting new skills for a higher paying job, being underemployed in a lower-skill job, or leaving the workforce altogether.” 

The CareerBuilder study identifies the following fastest growing jobs:
1.     Personal Care Aides
2.     Home Health Aides
3.     Web Developers
4.     Nurse Practitioners
5.     Physical Therapists
6.     Industrial Machine Mechanics
7.     Computer System Analysts
8.     Software Developers
9.     Market Research Analysts and Marketing Specialists
10.  Personal Financial Advisors

Jobs projected to decline are:
1.     Switchboard Operators, including Answering Service
2.     Door to Door Sales, News and Street Vendors, and Related Workers
3.     Printing Press Operators
4.     Molding, Coremaking, and Casting Machine Setters, Operators and Tenders
5.     Cutting, Punching and Press Machine Setters, Operators and Tendors
6.     Sewing Machine Operators
7.     Tellers
8.     Construction Managers
9.     Cooks, Fast Food
10.  Bookkeeping, Accounting and Auditing Clerks.

Share On: