You’ve heard that the top 1 percent of wage earners have taken the lion’s share of income growth in recent years, but it appears there’s also a top tier of jobs that are feeling most of the benefits from the economic recovery — both in terms of hiring demand and wage growth.
A new study from Austin-based job search site Indeed says only 15 percent of working-age Americans now hold positions that provide good pay and have shown strong salary growth over the last 10 years. Only 170 occupations out of 800 met the researchers’ criteria for a “stagnation-defying opportunity job.”
That may help explain why so many Americans say they feel like the recession never ended despite a sharp decline in the unemployment rate and some early signs that wage growth is picking up.
“When economists survey this landscape they see an increasingly polarized labor market in which a handful of high-skill, highly paid people reap the benefits at the top, while many more people are obliged to settle for poorly paid low-skill work at the bottom,” the Indeed team wrote.
Related: How Much Money It Takes to Be in the Top 1% In Every State
To find the opportunities for high-paying jobs, Indeed researchers sifted through data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and their own job listings. They sought out jobs that gave workers increased purchasing power — specifically, those for which wage growth topped the 25.3 percent growth of the Consumer Price Index measure of inflation from 2004 to 2014. The researchers also looked for positions with high pay, which they defined as annual salaries of at least $57,700, matching the inflation-adjusted purchasing power of the median home in the year 2000.
The researchers also looked for fields with wage growth that aren’t at a high risk of being automated. They sought areas of work within which one can easily transfer skills from one job to another (in other words, recession-proof) and that are specialized enough to beat the talent shortage that many employers are complaining about.
“The good news,” the job site says, “is that these roles are in demand by employers and make up 35 percent of all job postings on Indeed. If job seekers, employers, and policymakers can connect the dots, there is huge potential for more people to be in these high-growth, sustainable careers.”
So what does it take to escape the trend of long-term wage stagnation and land one of these high-growth jobs?
“These are not jobs just anybody can walk into,” wrote study author Tara Sinclair, Indeed’s chief economist.
She notes that 90 percent of these so-called “opportunity jobs” in are in just five fields: health care; management; computer and mechanical; business and financial; and architecture and engineering. Three quarters of them require a college degree, and half of the open job listings for such positions are located in just nine states: California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Related: The 6 Fastest-Growing Jobs That Don’t Require a College Degree
Here are the 25 top “opportunity jobs,” ranked by number of job postings on Indeed:
1. Registered Nurse
Average Annual Salary (2014): $69,970
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 25 percent
Education Requirement: Associate degree
2. Sales Managers
Average Annual Salary (2014): $126,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 30 percent
Education Requirement: Bachelor’s degree
3. Computer Occupations (e.g., Web Developer, Quality Engineer)
Average Annual Salary (2014): $86,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 36 percent
Education Requirement: Bachelor’s degree
4. Managers
Average Annual Salary (2014): $110,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 33 percent
Education Requirement: Bachelor’s degree
5. Accountants and Auditors
Average Annual Salary (2014): $74,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 29 percent
Education Requirement: Bachelor’s degree
6. Software Developers, Applications
Average Annual Salary (2014): 100,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 27 percent
Education Requirement: Bachelor’s degree
7. Physical Therapists
Average Annual Salary (2014): $84,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 32 percent
Education Requirement: Post-graduate degree
8. Network And Computer Systems Administrators
Average Annual Salary (2014): $80,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 28 percent
Education Requirement: Bachelor’s degree
9. Medical And Health Services Managers
Average Annual Salary (2014): $104,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 37 percent
Education Requirement: Post-graduate degree
10. Computer And Information Systems Managers
Average Annual Salary (2014): $136,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 36 percent
Education Requirement: Bachelor’s degree
11. Marketing Managers
Average Annual Salary (2014): $137,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 37 percent
Education Requirement: Bachelor’s degree
12. Physician Assistants
Average Annual Salary (2014): $97,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 42 percent
Education Requirement: Post-graduate degree
13. Systems Software Developers
Average Annual Salary (2014): $106,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 27 percent
Education Requirement: Bachelor’s degree
14. Speech-Language Pathologists
Average Annual Salary (2014): $75,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 32 percent
Education Requirement: Post-graduate degree
15. Computer Systems Analysts
Average Annual Salary (2014): $87,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 26 percent
Education Requirement: Bachelor’s degree
16. Architectural And Engineering Managers
Average Annual Salary (2014): $139,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 33 percent
Education Requirement: Post-graduate degree
17. Occupational Therapists
Average Annual Salary (2014): $80,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 39 percent
Education Requirement: Post-graduate degree
18. Human Resources Managers
Average Annual Salary (2014): $114,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 29 percent
Education Requirement: Bachelor’s degree
19. Sales Engineers
Average Annual Salary (2014): $105,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 35 percent
Education Requirement: Bachelor’s degree
20. Financial Managers
Average Annual Salary (2014): $130,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 38 percent
Education Requirement: Post-graduate degree
21. Administrative Services Managers
Average Annual Salary (2014): $92,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 35 percent
Education Requirement: Associate degree
22. Industrial Production Managers
Average Annual Salary (2014): $102,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 26 percent
Education Requirement: Bachelor’s degree
23. Family And General Practitioners
Average Annual Salary (2014): $186,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 35 percent
Education Requirement: Post-graduate degree
24. Database Administrators
Average Annual Salary (2014): $83,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 28 percent
Education Requirement: Bachelor’s degree
25. Operations Research Analysts
Average Annual Salary (2014): $83,000
Projected Salary Growth (2014 to 2024): 30 percent
Education Requirement: Post-graduate degree