Want to work and be well-paid?
Whether you’ve earned a post-graduate degree or didn’t complete high school, master a skill that’s hard to find and do a job that’s hard to do.
In deciding on their career paths, people on the verge of entering the labor market should also take note of the major trends in the U.S., said Robert Trumble, a management professor at Virginia Commonwealth University and director of the university’s Labor Studies Center. That market is being shaped in large measure by the aging of the population, he said.
“That leads to a tremendous increase in the need for health care,” Trumble said.
In the Richmond region, health care-related jobs will, in fact, be among the largest and fastest-growing occupations over the next decade, Richmond economist Christine Chmura said, with more than 9,500 registered nurses and home health aides needed.
The biggest growth in sheer numbers in the region will be in positions for retail salespeople, cashiers, and waiters and waitresses, with almost 23,700 new jobs available in the period, according to figures from Chmura Economics & Analytics.
Food workers, customer service representatives, office clerks, hand laborers and material movers, and personal care aides also will be among the occupations showing the greatest growth in metropolitan Richmond, the Chmura projections show.
Top-paying jobs in the region will be going to people with post-graduate degrees — doctors, dentists and lawyers — with the health professions dominating the list.
According to a Manpower Group survey, the top 10 hardest jobs to fill in 2012 nationally include those for skilled trade workers, engineers, IT staff, sales representatives, accounting and finance staff, drivers, mechanics, nurses, machinists and machine operators, and teachers.
“Skilled trades aren’t always No. 1, but they rarely drop out of the list,” said Achsah Carrier with the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center’s demographics and workforce group.
“All of these occupations require very specific, measurable, certifiable skills, and that’s part of what makes them hard to find,” Carrier said.
The jobs that often are the most secure also are jobs most people are unlikely to aspire to, Trumble said.
Many people are paid well for doing dirty, hard-to-fill jobs. But “kids are reluctant to take jobs in plumbing,” said Vincent D’Agostino, principal of the Hanover Center for Trades and Technology.
Michael V. Catoggio graduated in 2008 from the VCU School of Dentistry and went to work for the Dr. Baxter Perkinson & Associates dentistry group here.
“I love the opportunity of helping people, especially when they’re in pain,” Catoggio said, and the art of the work that can be so beneficial to people appealed to him.
Dentists’ high earnings potential — they can make an average of more than $141,000, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — also contributed to his decision to go to dental school, Catoggio said.
“Dentistry is a very secure, very stable industry that allows you to have a family and work normal, stable hours.”
Even if a person can gain admittance to a dental school, the profession is not for everyone, Catoggio said.
“Everything we do is on the millimeter scale,” the Henrico dentist said. “It is physically and mentally very draining to do what we do on a daily basis.”
Employers say they need people who can handle numbers, read and write, and get along with people.
“Whether you’re looking at manufacturing jobs or finance jobs or construction jobs, the overlapping trend is the higher skills required,” said Chmura, president and chief economist with Chmura Economics & Analytics.
“When we look at all occupations, three skill areas typically come up: math, literacy and customer service,” she said.
“Today, there’s a higher percentage of high-skill jobs in manufacturing than a year ago, and a lower percentage of low-skill jobs,” Chmura said, and that’s been the trend in recent years.
She pointed to Rolls-Royce’s aircraft engine components plant in Prince George County as an example of a high-tech facility that needs people skilled in using computers to run the manufacturing machines.
“If you’re highly skilled, you’re more productive,” Chmura said, “and if you’re more productive, your living standard will be rising.”
The big takeaway is that many of the fastest-growing jobs are in computer-related occupations, and they come with relatively high wages, said Don Lillywhite, the Virginia Employment Commission’s research director.
“People who understand those skills are more likely to survive,” said Carrier, with the Weldon Cooper Center.
For instance, Richmond’s chemical industry sector will need 1,000 new workers over the next decade, Chmura said, as baby boomers retire.
“And the chemical industry pays very well,” Chmura said: an average of almost $90,000 annually in the region.
“There will always be a need for nurses, said Susan Hunter, dean of J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College’s School for Nursing and Allied Health, ticking off some of the areas of opportunity: hospitals, physicians’ offices, long-term care work, home health care, dental facilities, outpatient clinics and public health services.
And, Hunter said, “I don’t see the demand going down.”
Reynolds has programs leading to certification for registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and nurse assistants, as well as specialties such as respiratory therapist. The programs also lead to jobs, if not always right away, and not always at preferred locations or desired times.
“If people weren’t getting employed,” Hunter said, “we’d be getting angry phone calls, and I don’t get those kinds of angry phone calls.”
The idea that “high school kids can’t find jobs” is not true, said D’Agostino, with the Hanover Center for Trades and Technology.
“There’s a strong demand for people who’ve acquired basic skills” in automotive technology, the building trades, culinary arts, small engines repair, and plumbing, he said.
D’Agostino has established partnerships for the center’s programs with 35 local employers.
“Once the students started going out on the job, they realized, ‘Wow, these students have great talents,’ “ he said. “They don’t have to train them. They come already trained.”
“College is not for everybody,” D’Agostino observed. “There’s nothing wrong or shameful about your child getting a job in the trades.”
Besides, he said, “they have insurance, 401(k)s, and no debt from their education.”
Being a skilled mason is another job in demand.
“If you have a skilled mason and he’s been to school and got his masonry card, yes, those people still have jobs,” said Kevin Stewart, owner and president of Eurotech U.S. Operations Inc., a Henrico County company that does historic masonry and chimney restoration work.
A trained and qualified mason can make as much as $25 an hour, Stewart said, and more when the building economy booms.
“I’ve been looking for a real mason now for around about three years,” Stewart said. “I need somebody who knows what he’s doing.”
Steve Messere, 20, went through J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College’s two-year associate’s degree program in automotive technology, which included a cooperative apprenticeship with Herndon Chevrolet Inc. in Orange.
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