2012′s Best Jobs for Bachelor Degree Grads

This is the third post in a series about the best jobs by ed level for 2012. See the original post here.

What are the best-performing jobs that require a Bachelor’s degree? In this post we explore the fastest-growing, highest-paying BA-level jobs from 2008-2012 — a time span that factors in the recession and allows us to focus on the occupations that have done well despite the down economy.

Our analysis is based on labor market data from EMSI’s 2012.1 Covered Employment release, which is drawn from over 80 state and federal data sources. We use Analyst, EMSI’s web-based labor market analysis tool, to assemble and filter this data that contains detailed information on over 1,100 industries and 800 occupations.

Total Job Growth

Table 1 shows all the occupations that have grown by at least 8,000 jobs since 2008. Here are the ones that added the most:

• Network systems & data communications analysts added 28,360 new jobs.
• Computer software engineers, applications added 25,164 new jobs. 
• Elementary school teachers added 23,891 new jobs.
• Social workers added 22,654 new jobs.

What’s interesting:

Most of these jobs got hit hardest in 2008-2010. Could have called that one, and yet, five of these jobs never declined at all:

• Social workers, 
• Dietitians & nutritionists, 
• Medical & clinical laboratory technologists, 
• Biological technicians, and
• Medical & public health social workers.

Most of the occupations on this table call for only a bachelor’s degree. A couple require bachelor’s or higher, plus work experience.

Greatest % Growth

Now look at the occupations that have grown by the greatest percent.

• Dieticians & nutritionists (38%),
• Social workers (33%), 
• Biomedical engineers (20%), and
• Agents & business managers of artists, performers, and athletes (15%).

Notice the overlap between this table and the first one. This means that some of the occupations that added a goodly number of jobs also have some of the heftiest proportionate growth. Most of the occupations on this table call for only a bachelor’s degree. A couple require bachelor’s or higher, plus work experience.

Highest Pay

The jobs with the highest median hourly wages (2011) are:

• Chief executives ($76.20), 
• Natural sciences managers ($56.87), 
• Engineering managers ($56.52), 
• Computer and information systems managers ($54.99), and
• Petroleum engineers ($53.62).

We notice a few interesting details about this table:

• Chief executives’ wages are actually comparable to those of some of the top-earning healthcare jobs, like psychiatrists, family practitioners, and dentists. [link to doctoral post] The sad thing is that chief executives is in decline.

• Out of 17 occupations, nine are related to management (SOC code 11). These are all in decline except for natural science managers, which has managed to nudge up 24 jobs.

• Four of the occupations are related to architecture & engineering (SOC code 17) and are all dropping jobs except for petroleum engineers, which has added almost 3,000 since 2008 (11%).

• Unlike the fastest-growing jobs, the majority of these high-wage occupations require a bachelor’s degree or higher, plus work experience, versus just a bachelor’s degree.

Leaders in Growth & Pay

So which BA-level jobs have both strong growth and high wages? These are the occupations that have it all, though some are still stronger in one area than the other (see italicized portions):

• Network systems & data communication analysts: 28,360 new jobs, 14% growth, $35.43

• Computer software engineers, applications: 25,164 new jobs, 5% growth, $45.32

• Social workers: 22,654 new jobs, 33% growth, $23.51

• Dietitians & nutritionists: 19,567 new jobs, 38% growth, $25.17

• Computer software engineers, systems software: 14,502 new jobs, 4% growth, $45.33

• Biomedical engineers: 2,959 new jobs, 20% growth, $38.05

• Petroleum engineers: 2,860 new jobs, 11% growth, $53.62

Find out more about EMSI and our data here. You can reach us via Twitter @DesktopEcon or by emailing Rob Sentz ([email protected]).

Read more at Economic Modeling Specialists (EMSI blog)