Where the jobs are: Hot prospects for college grads

Andre Jones is making more money a year and a half out of college than he ever would have solely on the merits of his geography degree. When the 25 year-old was laid off from his job as a digital mapper, he decided to do something about his nascent interest in building a website.

Jones started taking online courses in coding languages, and spent the past summer at an intensive boot camp for coders. He had three job offers by the end of June. Now he makes double his previous technician salary as a developer for a Pittsburgh-based start-up called Geospatial Corporation.

"The job market is really strong and they desperately need people," Jones says of the exponential growth in companies looking for anyone with tech, engineering and computer skills.

And those aren't the only kinds of jobs companies are desperate to fill.

Computer engineers, data analysts, physician assistants, software developers and petroleum engineers, to name a few, are expected to become the most lucrative and highest demand professions in the next three years, according to a USA TODAY analysis of workforce projections by Economic Modeling Specialists Intl., a division of CareerBuilder.

The analysis shows 1.8 million new high-skill jobs are expected to be created by 2017, about a 6% increase from 2013. These jobs, which require at least a four-year bachelor's degree, will account for 27% of all new jobs in the next three years.

• Four metros in Texas, three in Utah and three in the Pacific Northwest are expected to see significant job growth across most high-skill occupations, creating nearly 260,000 jobs. America's biggest cities – New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Boston and Chicago – will be job generators too, with more than 322,000 jobs total.

• Jobs with the highest expected growth rates may be relatively rare jobs, such as interpreters (projected growth of 19%) and genetic counselors (17%). But traditional, ubiquitous jobs such as teachers, managers and accountants top the list of occupations adding the greatest number of new jobs. Nearly 280,000 new jobs for elementary, secondary and postsecondary teachers are expected to be added by 2017.

• STEM jobs – those requiring a mastery of science, technology, engineering or math skills – are overwhelmingly in high demand and will account for about 38% of all high-skill jobs created; they are also typically among the highest paid.

Not all college grads have great prospects, though. While the economy gained nearly 250,000 jobs in September, wage growth has remained flat and initial jobless claims are still at pre-recession levels, making pockets of demand especially notable.

Still, the country faces a serious workforce problem when it comes to filling the jobs that require the highest level of skill and education. There aren't enough qualified job candidates, forcing companies to leave positions unfilled, hire people who are under-qualified, recruit talent outside of their home states or move business operations to new locations altogether. And in a global economy, in some cases Americans are competing for the highest-level jobs against a talent pool from around the world.

The nation faces a mounting student debt crisis as more people than ever are headed on the path to higher education. Yet universities are not graduating enough students in the degrees or skill-sets companies will most need in the near future.

States are already prepping for the deluge of job openings by implementing workforce development programs, introducing elementary school students to STEM curriculum, and adding new degree programs to public universities in fields such as information technology and electrical engineering.

Many of those are long-term solutions. In some cases, a college degree may need to be bypassed altogether. In order to turn out an adequately prepared high-skilled workforce in a short amount of time, there will have to be alternatives to higher education, experts say.

Ryan English was working as a headhunter for churches when he went on a mission trip along the Amazon River.

During that summer of 2009, he realized his favorite part of the trip was helping out in the medical and dental clinic. A few weeks after returning, he found out his wife was pregnant with their first child; it was just the motivation he needed to make a career change.

That's when the now 35-year-old started researching health care careers and found out about becoming a physician assistant. His undergraduate degree in youth ministry and speech communication wouldn't be any help. He'd have to go back to school.

But he knew the return on his investment by entering such an in-demand field would be worth it, he says.

"I was excited about doing health care, I was excited about medicine, but I wanted to make sure it was also worth the investment I was going to make and have a career that was viable long term," says English, who enrolled in the University of North Texas Health Science Center physician assistant masters program in Forth Worth last year after working for three years as a patient care technician.

Out of all high-skill occupations expected to grow at least 5% by 2017, physician assistant positions are among the jobs with both the highest growth and wage prospects. As the country deals with millions of aging Baby Boomers and more people have access to health care than ever before, both physician assistant and nurse practitioner jobs, with median wages of about $44 an hour, are expected to increase by at least 14% by 2017.

The great need for health care professionals may make some medical jobs more competitive too. Registered nursing positions, considered a middle-skill job by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, may soon become a high-skill job. By 2017, there may be more than 230,000 new nursing positions — a 9% increase — but many will require bachelor's degrees.

The industry has reached a point of having too many nurses with two-year degrees, and many hospitals now only hire those with four-year degrees, making nurses a classic case of a job "upskilling," experts say. The Institute of Medicine has also set a goal that 80% of nurses have bachelor's degrees by 2020, nearly double from currently.

In certain areas of the country, demand for health care providers will be especially high, particularly in Texas, where 217 of the state's 254 counties face shortages, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Texas metros dominate job creation with Houston, Dallas and McAllen adding nearly 700 new jobs by 2017.

But the seven physician assistant master's programs at Texas universities can only take 30 to 60 students on average for each incoming class.

"There's never going to be enough health care providers to take care of all the patients and all their needs," says Todd Pickard, president of the Texas Academy of Physician Assistants. "We don't have enough programs or enough seats."

English's physician assistant program is one of the larger ones, accepting 75 students into each class. He's expected to graduate in the spring of 2016 and is already fielding interest from recruiters on a weekly basis. Even though he'll graduate $50,000-$60,000 in debt, he expects to be making around $90,000 in his first job and six figures within a couple years.

"I feel like I'm getting a cheap deal," he says.

Washington state faces a similar problem in turning out enough graduates in STEM-related fields. The Seattle metro area is one of the top 10 areas of the country where high-skill jobs are expected to grow the most by 2017. As the home to companies including Boeing, Microsoft and Amazon, the biggest demand will be for jobs as information security analysts, computer systems analysts and software developers.

At the University of Washington-Tacoma campus, which houses the Institute of Technology, director Rob Friedman says the school tries to accept as many applicants as possible.

"We try our best to fill up every class we possibly can and not turn anybody away that's interested in pursuing these degrees," he says. The Institute of Technology offers five degree programs: in computer science, information technology, computer engineering, and master's degrees in computer science and cybersecurity.

The school, which has 700 students, has seen three consecutive years of at least 20% growth in the number of students it's admitting, and 90% of all undergraduates are immediately hired into "good jobs," Friedman says, "meaning more money than they ever expected to make."

Still, colleges aren't equipped to shoulder the entire burden of preparing a high-skilled workforce. Friedman admits universities can't move fast enough in hiring faculty and creating new degree programs to keep up with the demand for skilled graduates.

It took six years for The University of North Texas Health Science Center to increase the class size for its physician assistant program from 40 to 75. Discussions over adding cyber-operations and electrical engineering programs at UW Tacoma have been ongoing for the past year-and-a-half to two years, Friedman says. And even once the programs become available next fall, they'll each only have room for 30 students.

Some also argue that the college system as a whole doesn't do enough to prepare young adults for the workforce. Colleges don't give students enough information about job and wage prospects by degree or require them to take enough classes in their major, says Anthony Carnevale, director at Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. An American liberal arts education has students take about 60% of their course load outside their major with general requirements and electives, he says.

While there's significant value in the mission of a college education – "to allow you to live more fully in your time," Carnevale says – colleges need to figure how to connect students' education plan with their career plan.

"Colleges have to prepare people for work," Carnevale says. "If they don't they won't achieve their other missions. If you can't get a job you're not going to be a lifelong learner.You won't become a full citizen."

Even if colleges do step up workforce preparation, there's an issue of time when it comes to the education system.

"The challenge is you can't snap your fingers and suddenly get people through 15 years of school," says Chris Harder, economic development director at the Portland Development Commission in Portland, Ore., another high-growth area with a burgeoning tech start-up scene. "There needs to be alternatives to higher education for people getting into software and technology."

Retraining programs are popping up across the country. Treehouse, based in Portland, is an online coding school that teaches Web and mobile app development skills. An account costs $25 a month and students can "graduate" within six to 12 months, says co-founder and CEO Ryan Carson.

Jones, the geographic information systems developer, started his Web development education last summer by taking Treehouse courses. He still takes courses occasionally to keep his skills fresh. The advantage of programs like his, Carson says, is that they can get away with an extremely high student-to-teacher ratio. Treehouse works with 86,000 students around the world but only has a staff of about 70.

"There's an explosion in tech jobs," Carson says. "What we're seeing is that universities just can't graduate enough computer sciences (majors) to fill the need, so employers are having to resort to hiring people without experience."

In Portland, Treehouse is partnering with workforce development organization Worksystems to operate Code Oregon, a program that aims to give away 10,000 Treehouse accounts to Oregonians looking for work. The company also recently started working with a recruiter to help place Treehouse students in jobs once they've finished a course track. Portland is the fifth-ranked metro area expected to have significant job growth across nearly all high-skill occupations, behind Houston, Austin, San Antonio and Salt Lake City.

Community colleges are also stepping up with more degree programs, graduating students in half the time it typically takes to finish from a university. Washington has more than 30 community and technical colleges, compared with just six public, four-year institutions. Many of them are adding degree programs such as a bachelor of applied science in application development and electrical engineering.

"It's alleviating a burden on us for the demand for tech-related degrees," Friedman says.

The Obama administration has also made community colleges a priority, with an initiative that provides billions in funding to schools and has a goal of adding 5 million new graduates by 2020.

In other areas of the country, states are dealing with the growing skills gap by attempting to capture kids' interest in subjects like engineering and math at a young age.

In Utah, where the Provo and Salt Lake City metro areas are expected to see some of the highest growth in high-skill jobs in the country, the governor's office created a STEM Action Center. The center provides funding for hands-on digital programs that teach students math skills, coding and engineering as early as seventh grade, and training opportunities for teachers so they're better prepared to teach STEM curriculum.

Provo and Salt Lake City are expected to have an influx of computer science, engineering, and software jobs in the next three years. Companies, including Oracle, Ebay and Adobe, all have major operations in the Salt Lake City area, which some have dubbed Silicon Slopes for its concentration of tech companies against the backdrop of snowy mountains.

In the Granite School District in Salt Lake County, a program called BioInnovations Gateway provides lab space to local start-ups and in exchange, the companies employ high school and college students as interns. Many of them end up getting hired, some straight out of high school.

Chandler Bradford, 18, is making relative pennies as a lab assistant for the biotech start-up he interned for as a senior at Taylorsville High School in Taylorsville, Utah. After graduating in June, the company, Knudra Transgenics, hired Bradford. He makes $7.50 an hour and works about 30 hours a week while taking courses at a community college. He says the experience, both as an intern and now, is worth more than his meager pay.

"This has really helped what I want to do and where I want to go in life," says Bradford, who hopes to study molecular biology at the University of Utah.

With more than 7,000 new jobs in STEM fields expected across Provo, Salt Lake City and Ogden metro areas by 2017, getting future graduates interested now is crucial to filling the jobs gap, says Tami Goetz, director of the STEM Action Center.

"You can bring people out of state as a short-term fix but if we don't address it internally we're just putting a band aid on the problem," she says.

Some tech companies say finding talent isn't the problem. Particularly on a global scale, there are plenty of data scientists and computer engineers, says Jeff Vijungco, vice president of global talent acquisition and development at Adobe. It's competing for the same high-skilled employee base as so many other data-driven companies that makes recruiting people difficult.

"The recruiting process is probably the most aggressive recruiting environment I've seen in years," Vijungco says.

The top jobs Adobe is hiring for right now are designers, data scientists and software engineers, Vijungco says. Adobe has more than two dozen offices around the world, including one in Seattle and one in Lehi, Utah, outside of Salt Lake City.

"I can find them pretty quickly," Vijungco says, but "great talent has options."

As areas that have perhaps historically been viewed as second-tier markets expand, companies also have to convince potential hires to come to cities such as Portland and Salt Lake City. The major metro areas, including New York City, Washington, Houston and Los Angeles, are still expected to take the lead on the total number of new high-skill jobs in the next three years. But those areas aren't necessarily going to experience the most growth or demand for those skills.

Nationally, about 100,000 software jobs will be added, as well as 12,000 information security analysts. Salt Lake City is expected to have an 18% increase in job openings for software systems developers, a position that pays about $91,500 a year. In the New York City metro area, that job is only expected to increase by 8%. Meanwhile, Portland will experience 17% growth in market research analyst positions; computer systems analysts and lab technicians in Portland are also expected to grow 12%-13%.

Surveys find Millennials in particular are prioritizing quality of life and work-life balance more than previous generations – convincing them to move to outdoors destinations like Oregon and Utah isn't necessarily a hard sell, not to mention a cheaper sell.

Pamela Ju, 27, moved to Portland from Cincinnati six months ago when she was hired as a marketing analyst at Puppet Labs, an IT automation software company. She was looking to change jobs, and "the fact that it was based out of Portland was very appealing," she says of Puppet Labs.

"Portland seemed like a really exciting place to live because of a lot of the lifestyle benefits that we hear so much about in the rest of the country," she says. "The public transit, the delicious food, beer, wine and coffee, the proximity to the mountains and the ocean, and the overall respect for the environment. ... And Portland seemed like a great place to be professionally because of its growing tech scene, the entrepreneurial energy that it draws."

Attracting the right talent to these growth areas will also be crucial to the local economies, say John Wenstrup and Joel Janda, partners at Boston Consulting Group in Seattle. Both contributed to a study out last year on the lack of locals who could fill a mounting jobs gap in Washington state. They found that if the gap is closed, it could mean 160,000 jobs and $720 million a year in new state revenue.

They also say states may have to resort to unconventional methods in order to train enough people to fill the biggest needs.

"To solve this problem, ultimately the opportunity is so large, the need is so great, it's not just about increasing the capacity of the current system," Janda says. "There's going to be a transformation that's going to be required that changes the way education is delivered."

However states approach the challenge, they stand to gain not only a more diverse, highly skilled workforce, but a stronger, more competitive economy.

Says Wenstrup, "There probably is no greater return on investment than doing things that attract people to fill these unfilled jobs."