Where The Jobs Are

The cover article of the January 2007 issue of Time Magazine was titled "Where The Jobs Are". More than seven years later, people are still wondering where the jobs are, and this sentiment resonates whether you are currently employed, are looking for work or are a soon-to-graduate student.

This post examines the employment landscape from the perspective of where the jobs are currently, and identifies resources that can be used to understand what and where they are going to be in the future?

Where are the jobs today?

There are several great resources from Indeed.com, Simply Hired, Wallet Hub and EMSI-Careerbuilder that identify market trends and where the jobs are today by metro area and industry.

Indeed.com shows job postings per capita for the top 50 most populous metropolitan areas in the US. At the the high end, San Jose, California has 164 job postings per 1,000 people and at the low end, Riverside, California has just 27 jobs per 1,000 people. The average number of job postings for the top 50 metro areas is 69. The other cities in the top five for the 4th quarter of 2013 are Raleigh, NC, Hartford, CT, Washington DC and Denver, CO. Indeed also examines job market competition which looks at how hard it is to find a job in a particular city by comparing job postings to the number of unemployed persons.

Twenty metro areas have a 1:1 ratio of jobs to unemployed while the bottom six metro areas have a ratio of 1:3 or worse.

In addition to being a leading job board, Simply Hired also provides some interesting trend data for jobs including trends at the National and Metro level as well as trends for Industry and Occupation.

Another great resource for current jobs comes from Wallet Hub who put together an analysis recently titled "The Best Cities To Find a Job". Using 13 unique metrics, Wallet Hub analyzed the 60 largest U.S. cities in order to give people a sense of where on the map the strongest job markets and greatest prospects for long-term financial security could be found.

Every metro area in America has at least one or two industries that drive its economy. Careerbuilder and EMSI have taken a different whack at the current jobs analysis by looking at the industries driving growth and jobs for the 100 most populous metros in the U.S. Their data is based on 2013 jobs, regional concentration, average earnings, and job growth.

EMSI also sifted through their data and came up with the top dozen occupations that are in the highest demand for 2014 along with best cities for those positions. On the other hand, there are some jobs that you may want to avoid as their underlying industries appear to be on the decline. In this recent blog post, SimplyHired.com identified five of the fastest shrinking jobs that you should sidestep if possible.

Where the jobs are going to be?

There are several great resources for understanding where the job growth is going to be in the future. One of these resources comes Moody's Analytics and USA Today which provides a job growth forecast using an interactive map that lets you explore different industries and geographies to understand where the job growth is coming from.

The United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes their Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) every two years and the latest version was published in January 2014.

The OOH provides information on what workers do; the work environment; education, training, and other qualifications; pay; the job outlook; similar occupations; and sources of additional information, for 334 occupational profiles covering about 84 percent of the jobs in the economy. They also include a job outlook and employment change estimates for the next 10 years through 2022.

These three tables provide some interesting insights into new, fast growing and highest paying occupations:

• Most new jobs projected
• Fastest growing occupations
• Highest paying occupations

What about middle class jobs?

Forbes Magazine recently identified the top cities that are creating the most middle class jobs. Over the past three years, these higher wage professions have accounted for just 29% of all new jobs created while more than half of all new jobs were in jobs paying less than $13 per hour. Wanted Analytics took Forbes analysis to the next level and identifed the top 10 jobs in each of the job creating cities.

What if I don't know what career is best for me?

If you don't know what career is best for you or are looking for a career change, you shoudl check out O*NET OnLine, an online career exploration and job analysis website.

You can search O*NET OnLine by specific job codes or keywords to find various occupations. Once you locate an occupation you want to explore, O*NET OnLine provides a summary report that provides a job description, related job titles, general tasks, tools, knowledge, skills, abilities, work activities, education, interests, work styles, wages and projected growth.

This post originally appeared in the AppleOne Career Seekers Blog.