December 9, 1999 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

More than two-thirds of projected fastest growing occupations are in high wage jobs

BLS employment projections for 1998-2008 reveal that more than two-thirds of the 30 occupations expected to have the fastest employment growth had median hourly earnings in 1997 above the national median.

[Chart data—TXT]

Among those 30 fastest growing occupations, 11 are in the top quartile of median hourly earnings ($16.25 and over). The four occupations expected to experience the fastest employment growth—computer engineers, computer support specialists, systems analysts, and database administrators—all reported hourly earnings in the top quartile during 1997.

Ten of the 30 fastest growing occupations reported hourly earnings in the next highest quartile of earnings, from $10.89 to $16.14, during 1997. Desktop publishing specialists and paralegals and legal assistants are the two occupations expected to have the fastest employment growth in this earnings quartile from 1998 to 2008.

These projections data are a product of the BLS Employment Projections program. Find out more in "Occupational employment projections to 2008", by Douglas Braddock, Monthly Labor Review, November 1999.