Teflon Degrees in a Recession Economy

There's a lot of noise in the education sector today about the value of a college degree, particularly in the midst of a severe economic downturn that has featured the loss of millions of jobs in the U.S. alone. The pollsters and pundits don't have a lot of hard evidence that will make college graduates more comfortable, but what seems to emerge from the public dialogue is the fact that fewer people with college degrees are unemployed than those without; and that those with degrees have a broader range of job options open to them.

The question that remains for many considering new training for a new career is, "What profession is least likely to experience major job loss?" The closest answer to that question is a survey of where job and business expansion is most likely to occur in the future, and the most comprehensive source is probably the U.S. Department of Labor, an agency with a limitless supply of statistics.

The Department of Labor says that among the fastest growing industries in upcoming years are information technology, government employment, health care, and social services. One way to ferret out a career choice that will have staying power is to look for positions that are mentioned in more than one of these sectors.

If nothing else happens in health care when the dust settles in Washington, medical care in the future is going to require additional record keeping. Insurance companies, health care providers and increasingly, the government are going to have a role in keeping us well. Today most health care records land in a digital database of some type, so a professional with a bioinformatics degree is going to have a foot in two of the fastest growing professional sectors.

Continuing along the same path, a career discussion should take note of the fact that every year a larger percentage of health care services are delivered through public facilities. Public clinics provide services for those without health care and may well provide care for those with subsidized health insurance in the future - a feature of the health care program developed in Massachusetts that is designed to cover all of its citizens.

Which professions cross health care delivery with public services? A little browsing in the Department of Labor's Occupational Outlook Handbook will show you that substance abuse counseling is a profession expected to undergo extremely rapid growth in the upcoming decade, and that the majority of professionals in this field work in social service agencies or in facilities supported in part by government funding. A counseling degree can provide opportunities in either the substance abuse area or in rehabilitation counseling, another quickly growing field that helps people focus on new job opportunities in a changing economy.