Labor and Workforce Trends

Education and training are expanding:

• Education is vital to earning potential. On average, full-time workers with high-school diplomas earn $585 per week. Workers with a college education earn, on average, $1029 per week. Men with advanced degrees make $2,887 or more; women make $1,997 or more. (Taken from How Did You Do, Parade Magazine 3/12/06)
• Approximately 130,000 K-12 teachers will be needed in the United States between 2000 and 2010 according to the National Center for Educational Statistics.
• Knowledge turnover in the professional fields is a growing challenge that will require continuous retraining and lifelong learning.
• In the next 10 years, close to 10 million jobs will open up for professionals, executives and technicians in the highly skilled service occupations.
• There is a major trend toward increasing adult education.
• Education is rapidly moving toward the Internet.

Specialization is spreading:

• Globalization of the economy calls for the more independent specialist. Companies will turn to consultants and contractors who specialize in narrow markets and technologies.
• This will create endless new niche markets to be served by small businesses and bring more career choices.

The Glass Ceiling has cracked:

• Women's salaries in the United States have been rising faster than men's since 1975. However, there is still a long way to go. Average earnings for a man employed full time in 2000 was around $10,000 more than his female counterpart.
• However, women's average income could exceed men's within a generation. Today, some 64% of young American women are enrolled in college, compared with only 60% of young men.

Second and third careers are becoming more common:

• Forecasting International believes that people change careers every ten years.
• Retirement plans are being revised so that workers can transfer medical and pension benefits from one career to the next.

Generation X and Millennials:

• These generations thrive on challenge, opportunity and training.
• These young professionals are well equipped for work in an increasingly high-tech world, but they have little interest in their employer's needs.
• Both customers and employees, they will demand more advances in telecommunications and Internet based transactions.

Time is becoming the world's most precious commodity:

• Workers spend about 10% more time at work than they did one decade ago.
• In this high paced environment, professionals are desperate for any product that offers them a way to simplify their lives.

Taken from Cam Report July - August, 2005 Volume 28, No. 17.

For more information see http://www.bls.gov/oco/, http://www.acinet.org/acinet/default.asp.

Starting Salaries Increase

MoneyCNN.com reports on a quarterly survey published by the National Association of Colleges & Employers' (NACE) that reveals an overall increase in starting salaries for college graduates of 2006.

The survey, which polled 83 different private and public schools across the country, revealed significant increases in most major areas. The data collected only includes majors that have received 50 offers or more. The article also noted that employers planned to hire 14.5 percent more college grads this year, compared to the 2004-2005 academic year.

Source: National Association of Colleges and Employers

Most lucrative college degrees: In survey of the Class of 2006, engineers still get top salary offers, but accounting and finance majors are climbing quickly CNN. Retrieved February 20, 2006 from http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/13/pf/college/starting_salaries/index.htm.

For more salary surveys as well as profession specific surveys try http://jobstar.org/tools/salary/sal-surv.php.

Bureau of Labor statistics can be found at http://stats.bls.gov/.

Finding a job: What does it cost, what does it pay? http://www.datamasters.com/.

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