Introduction ___
increasing your earnings as you gain experience and skills. When the fi gure is low, it
means you will probably need to move on to another occupation to improve your
earnings substantially. For the 283 SOC jobs in this book, the earnings growth potential
ranges from a high of 59.9% for Music Directors and Composers to a low of 10.5%
for Postal Service Clerks. Because the percentage fi gures would be hard to interpret, we
use verbal tags to indicate the level of Earnings Growth Potential: “very low” when the
percentage is less than 25%, “low” for 25–35%, “medium” for 35%–40%, “high” for
40%–50%, and “very high” for any fi gure higher than 50%. For the highest-paying
jobs, those for which BLS reports the median earnings as “more than $145,600,” we are
unable to calculate a fi gure for Earnings Growth Potential.! e median earnings for all workers in all occupations were $31,410 in May 2007.! e 283
SOC jobs in this book were chosen partly on the basis of good earnings, so their average
is a respectable $45,793. (! is is a weighted average, which means that jobs with larger
workforces are given greater weight in the computation. It also is based on the assumption
that a job with income reported as “more than $145,600” pays exactly $145,600, so the
actual average is somewhat higher.)
! e beginning (that is, 10th percentile) wage for all occupations in May 2007 was $16,060.
For the 283 SOC jobs in this book, the weighted average is an impressive $28,118.
! e earnings data from the OES survey is reported under the SOC system of job titles. As
noted earlier in this introduction, the SOC system collapses some O*NET job titles, such
as Accountants and Auditors. In Part IV of this book, where the O*NET job titles are
described separately, you may notice that the salary we report for Accountants ($57,060)
in Part IV is identical to the salary we report for Auditors. In reality, there probably is a
diff erence, but this is the best information available.Projected Growth and Number of Job Openings
! is information comes from the Offi ce of Occupational Statistics and Employment
Projections, a program within the Bureau of Labor Statistics that develops information
about projected trends in the nation’s labor market for the next ten years.! e most recent
projections available cover the years from 2006 to 2016.! e projections are based on
information about people moving into and out of occupations.! e BLS uses data from
various sources in projecting the growth and number of openings for each job title: Some
data comes from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey and some comes from
an OES survey.! e BLS economists assumed a steady economy unaff ected by a major war,
depression, or other upheaval.! ey also assumed that recessions may occur during the
decade covered by these projections, as would be consistent with the pattern of business
cycles we have experienced for several decades. However, because their projections cover 10
years, the fi gures for job growth and openings are intended to provide an average of both the
good times and the bad times.