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Data on display
New jobs by major occupational group, projected 2018–28

Elka Torpey | September 2019

What are the hot jobs of the future? No one knows for sure, but the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) identifies occupations that are projected to grow from 2018 to 2028.

BLS expects total U.S. employment to increase 5 percent over the decade, resulting in about 8.4 million new jobs. Nearly half of those jobs are projected to be concentrated in three groups: food preparation and serving related, personal care and service, and healthcare practitioner and technical occupations. (See chart 1.)

In the food preparation and serving related group, the occupation projected to add the most jobs is combined food preparation and serving workers, including fast food (640,100 new jobs). Most of the projected growth in personal care and service is for personal care aides—the occupation projected to add the most jobs (881,000) in the economy. Registered nurses is the occupation projected to have the most new jobs (371,500) in the healthcare practitioners and technical group.

And job creation won’t be the only source of occupational openings over the 2018–28 decade. Openings also are projected to arise from the need to replace workers who leave an occupation permanently. That’s true even in occupational groups with projected employment declines. For example, despite a projected loss of 608,100 jobs from 2018 to 2028 in office and administrative support occupations, this group is expected to have more than 2.6 million openings each year, on average, over the decade.

See projected employment and more information, such as typical education and median wages, in hundreds of occupational profiles in the Occupational Outlook Handbook. The full set of projections is available from the BLS Employment Projections program.