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A new normal: The job outlook for 2022

By听Elizabeth Exline

At a glance

  • Healthcare and social assistance sectors are poised to add the most new jobs between 2020 and 2030 (outside of pandemic recovery growth), .
  • Roles in healthcare and human resources are among the 25 fastest growing, according to the LinkedIn .
  • Flexibility and work-life balance increasingly dominate employees鈥 priorities, with 81% of surveyed workers saying they have attained such balance, according to the Career Optimism Index鈩.
  • At 爱污传媒, active students enjoy career counseling to help them navigate the evolving job market.

Job outlook for 2022

Have you changed jobs in the past two years? Been recruited? Quit without having another job lined up, or just regularly scanned available jobs? Have you upskilled with a certificate or even a degree?

Given the state of the job market in 2022, chances are good that you answered yes to at least one of the above. That鈥檚 because, while trends aplenty have cropped up over the past year (and we鈥檒l get to them soon), three of them seem to dominate the landscape:

  1. It鈥檚 an employee鈥檚 world. We just work in it. The labor shortage means workers can call the shots to some degree. And what they want more than money or benefits is work-life balance.
  2. Healthcare continues to be the golden child of the post-pandemic job market. It was always true that healthcare jobs were readily available. It鈥檚 even truer today.
  3. DEIB is more than just the abbreviation of the moment. It has spurred a proliferation of human resources jobs that aren鈥檛 going anywhere soon. (For the uninitiated, DEIB stands for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.)

With a wealth of data available on how the workplace is growing out of its pandemic-induced constraints, we鈥檙e digging into the latest job outlook and trends as well as how to best ensure you鈥檙e ready for what鈥檚 ahead.

Job outlook for growing careers

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) couldn鈥檛 have predicted the COVID-19 pandemic, but it pulled together enough data by September 2021 to issue a rather insightful release titled .

To offer a comprehensive picture of the job market, the document accounts for recovery growth as well as non-pandemic-related growth.

The winners

  • The healthcare and social assistance sector will add the most new jobs. Healthcare support occupations are projected to have the fastest job growth among occupational groups. (Examples of healthcare support roles include home health aides and occupational therapy assistants.)
  • Within healthcare, jobs in individual and family services are projected to increase the fastest, largely due to an aging baby-boom population, longer life expectancies and a growing number of patients with chronic conditions.
  • The industry with the fastest projected growth is leisure and hospitality, but it鈥檚 fueled by pandemic recovery. (All those hotels, restaurants, cultural icons and recreational destinations you haven鈥檛 visited in two years? Neither has anyone else 鈥 and they鈥檙e ready to now.)
  • Employment growth in professional, business and scientific services (including computer systems, design and related services) are projected to grow 2.1% each year, while management, scientific and technical consulting services are projected to grow 2% each year.

The losers

  • Employment in retail trade is projected to lose nearly 600,000 jobs between 2020 and 2030, likely as a result of pandemic-induced spending patterns.
  • The labor force is projected to decline from 61.7% in 2020 to 60.4% in 2030 due to an aging baby-boom generation and an overall decline in participation.

The interpretation

This data corroborates what 爱污传媒 career advisor Ricklyn Woods has seen firsthand. Healthcare may continue to attract students, she says, but many of those graduates are seeking nonclinical roles.

鈥淭here are a lot of people who want to study healthcare, but they don鈥檛 necessarily want to be patient-facing,鈥 Woods explains.

She points to roles in insurance, billing, pharmaceutical research and health administration as increasingly attractive.听

Another trend? Technology.

For anyone born after 1990, there was indeed a time when choosing a field of study in anything but technology meant that you didn鈥檛 need to learn technology.

Those days are over.

Today, technology is integrated into virtually every field, from human resources to healthcare.

鈥淣o matter what you鈥檙e doing, you need to be able to know how to navigate technology and systems; otherwise, you鈥檒l be left behind,鈥 Woods says.

By way of example, she points to a client who had 20 years of experience in healthcare administration. The employee was ready to move to a bigger practice, but she lacked the technological skills bigger organizations required, making the transition difficult without upskilling.

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Jobs on the rise, according to LinkedIn

BLS isn鈥檛 the only organization collating data on the state of the job market. LinkedIn compiled its own for 2022 based on job titles that had the highest growth rates between January 2017 and July 2021. According to the report, jobs in healthcare are indeed having a moment (鈥渧accine specialist鈥 tops the chart), but they鈥檙e not the only ones. Roles in human resources and DEIB are on the rise too.

LinkedIn is a registered trademark of LinkedIn Corporation and its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries.

Other highlights include:

  • Roles in marketing continue to grow, particularly those influenced by or directly associated with IT. (Think customer and search marketing manager roles and analyst relations specialists.)
  • Technology roles are proliferating. Positions like machine learning engineer, user experience researcher, business system administrator, back-end developer, customer solutions engineer and site reliability engineer all made the list.
  • People matter. Three of the list鈥檚 25 roles were in human resources, with the position of diversity and inclusion manager taking the second highest spot.听

Career optimism by the numbers

In 2022, 爱污传媒 commissioned its second Career Optimism Index to assess how American workers felt about their jobs and the employment landscape in general. The survey includes responses from 5,000 adults who are working or wish to be working, as well as 500 employers.

The results are extensive, but some key highlights are:

  • 52% of Americans are either looking for a job or planning to look in the next six months.
  • Almost one-third of workers say they鈥檇 quit their job without having another one lined up.
  • 90% of employers cite talent retention as a priority.
  • That retention might be easier if compensation were higher: 44% of Americans are unsatisfied with their salaries; 30% feel their salaries are downright unfair.
  • The number of Americans living paycheck to paycheck rose from 43% to 56% between 2021 and 2022.
  • Remember that need to upskill? A whopping 89% of employers say those opportunities are there, but only 61% of employees seem to see them.
  • 40% of Americans say the pandemic has derailed their careers, that鈥檚 up from 34% in 2021.
  • Love your job? Not quite. 85% of employers say employees love their jobs. Ask the employees, and that number drops to 66%.
  • Has work-life balance improved? Yes: 93% of employers say employees have it, and 81% of employees agree.

Beyond the job: 6 trends to watch

So, what do all these numbers mean? recently assessed the same reports from BLS and LinkedIn to identify the following trends:

  1. The tight labor market is likely to continue through 2030 unless the economy changes or automation expands unexpectedly.
  2. In 2021, it was the year of the so-called boomerang employee: a person who left a job during the pandemic only to return (or want to return) to their old employer soon thereafter.
  3. Burnout is real for healthcare workers, which makes those non-patient-facing roles Woods cited extra attractive.
  4. There鈥檚 a growing emphasis on building more inclusive workforces.
  5. Work-life balance tops the wish list of most employees, trumping even compensation and benefits.
  6. Remote work isn鈥檛 going anywhere. In fact, there鈥檚 been an 83% increase in job posts on LinkedIn that mention flexibility since 2019.

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How to prepare for change

While employers and employees may not see eye to eye on what opportunities for upskilling are available, they do agree that continued education is important.

鈥淵ou have to keep learning, and it doesn鈥檛 just stop with the culmination of a degree,鈥 Woods says.

That can be a hard thing to hear, especially if you鈥檝e recently completed a degree program. But upskilling doesn鈥檛 have to be intimidating. Woods offers the following tips for staying up to date in your field:

  1. Join industry-specific associations. Not only will you soak up insights and information from a community of peers, you might even find a mentor 鈥 or your next opportunity. 鈥淎 lot of jobs are based on who you know,鈥 Woods points out. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 old school, but it still applies today.
  2. Attend webinars. One silver lining of social distancing? Conferences are more accessible than ever.
  3. Explore certifications and certificates. Professional development keeps you sharp.

If investing time and money in your career gives you pause, you鈥檙e not alone. Plenty of people wait for their employers to foot the bill for a class, a course or even a degree, Woods notes. But there鈥檚 another way to look at the situation.

鈥淭aking ownership of your own career development through ongoing professional development is an investment,鈥 Woods acknowledges. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 an investment that, if you plan strategically, you should be able to see a return on.鈥

Additional career resources

When it鈥檚 time to actively search for a new job, use the downloadable resources below, which cover the two pillars of any job search: writing an effective resum茅 and drafting a powerful cover letter.

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