The 20 Hottest Job Markets & Who Will Benefit

Dr. Greg Ketchum, 4/24/04

The big question on everyone’s mind is “where are the jobs” in this 28-month old recovery? In previous downturns it took on average just 9 months to get job creation back up to pre-recession levels.

Boom Towns
Business 2.0 recently ranked the top 20 “boom towns” in America, or those towns with population over 1 million that are

“home to fast-growing companies in the economy’s most promising industries;
combined, they’re forecast to add 850,000 skilled jobs in the next 4 years.” Emphasis on “skilled.”

Boom Town Factors
Cities in the top 20 all shared…

Vibrant, diversified economy
Expectation of rapid job growth
Large populations of highly educated and skilled workers

We’ll show you that list in a moment, but first there’s one very important factor that goes hand-in-hand with this top 20 list.

Skilled/Educated Class
Notice I’ve mentioned several times “skilled & highly educated workers.” In order to take advantage of what these boom towns have to offer you’ve got to get yourself into that group of the skilled and best-educated workers as they will reap the most benefits over the unskilled and less educated.

This group makes up only 30% of the US workforce of 138 million, but accounts for 50% of total wages.
By 2010, it’s projected that this class will represent 60% of total wages.

Defining Characteristic of Skilled Class
They work with ideas. Rather than physically build something, say on an assembly line, they engineer the assembly line, design the product on it, & create the marketing campaign that sells it.

They hold a variety of titles: Analyst, entrepreneur, engineer, scientist, designer, account executive, senior manager, lawyer, filmmaker, banker, educator.

What Can We Learn
If you want to be in one of the boats that the rising tide of job growth will lift: