Future careers
Emerging roles: the fastest-growing jobs, 2025–35
The 30 fastest-growing U.S. occupations in BLS Employment Projections 2025–35, with growth, annual openings, median pay, entry education, and AI exposure.
Data compiled 2026-10-09 · BLS 2025–35 · O*NET 31.0 · AEI May 2026
All U.S. occupations, 2025–35
+3.5%
projected employment growth, from 170.3 million jobs in 2025.
BLS Employment Projections 2025–35
Fastest-growing occupations
Ranked by projected percent change in employment
| Occupation | Growth | Openings / yr | Median wage | Entry education |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.Nurse Practitioners | +41.0% | 29,400 | $132,300 | Master's degree |
| 2.Solar Photovoltaic Installers | +36.5% | 4,200 | $53,140 | High school diploma or equivalent |
| 3.Data Scientists | +34.6% | 24,800 | $120,230 | Bachelor's degree |
| 4.Wind Turbine Service Technicians | +29.5% | 1,500 | $64,120 | Postsecondary nondegree award |
| 5.Medical and Health Services Managers | +24.2% | 62,300 | $123,860 | Bachelor's degree |
| 6.Physical Therapist Assistants | +23.0% | 18,500 | $68,380 | Associate's degree |
| 7.Psychiatric Technicians | +22.3% | 17,000 | $45,130 | Postsecondary nondegree award |
| 8.Computer and Information Research Scientists | +21.8% | 2,900 | $140,300 | Master's degree |
| 9.Occupational Therapy Assistants | +21.5% | 8,100 | $72,300 | Associate's degree |
| 10.Ophthalmic Medical Technicians | +21.4% | 11,800 | $45,570 | Postsecondary nondegree award |
| 11.Physician Assistants | +21.1% | 11,500 | $135,880 | Master's degree |
| 12.Information Security Analysts | +21.0% | 14,100 | $129,180 | Bachelor's degree |
| 13.Occupational Health and Safety Technicians | +19.4% | 3,800 | $61,560 | High school diploma or equivalent |
| 14.Hearing Aid Specialists | +19.4% | 900 | $65,160 | High school diploma or equivalent |
| 15.Epidemiologists | +18.7% | 800 | $87,220 | Master's degree |
| 16.Occupational Health and Safety Specialists | +18.5% | 17,100 | $90,150 | Bachelor's degree |
| 17.Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors | +18.4% | 50,500 | $59,350 | Master's degree |
| 18.Home Health and Personal Care Aides | +18.1% | 760,500 | $35,800 | High school diploma or equivalent |
| 19.Health Specialties Teachers, Postsecondary | +17.9% | 24,900 | $107,310 | Doctoral or professional degree |
| 20.Industrial Machinery Mechanics | +17.8% | 44,400 | $64,520 | High school diploma or equivalent |
| 21.Logisticians | +17.6% | 26,600 | $82,320 | Bachelor's degree |
| 22.Nursing Instructors and Teachers, Postsecondary | +17.1% | 8,500 | $80,250 | Doctoral or professional degree |
| 23.Speech-Language Pathologists | +16.6% | 12,500 | $97,870 | Master's degree |
| 24.Health Information Technologists and Medical Registrars | +15.9% | 3,000 | $68,020 | Associate's degree |
| 25.Computer and Information Systems Managers | +15.8% | 53,500 | $175,140 | Bachelor's degree |
| 26.Massage Therapists | +15.3% | 20,400 | $58,450 | Postsecondary nondegree award |
| 27.Occupational Therapists | +14.8% | 10,000 | $100,330 | Master's degree |
| 28.Diagnostic Medical Sonographers | +13.9% | 6,000 | $96,590 | Associate's degree |
| 29.Marriage and Family Therapists | +13.5% | 6,900 | $66,940 | Master's degree |
| 30.Forensic Science Technicians | +13.3% | 2,800 | $72,060 | Bachelor's degree |
Sources & methodology
Every figure on this page comes from the public datasets below. We do not edit the source values; derived figures are explained here.
- Emerging roles are the 30 occupations in the BLS fastest-growing occupations table (Table 1.3, 2025–35), ranked by projected percent change.
- Growth, openings, wage, and entry education are the BLS figures as published; openings include growth plus replacement needs.
- Tasks are O*NET 31.0 core task statements ranked by importance; skills are O*NET importance ratings (1–5).
- Exposure is the human-annotator β score from Eloundou et al.: the share of an occupation's O*NET tasks that a large language model could do at least 50% faster at equal quality, counting tasks that need extra software (E2) at half weight. We label β under 0.25 low, 0.25–0.5 moderate, and 0.5 or more high; these bands are ours, not the authors'.
- BLS occupations are matched to O*NET-SOC codes with the BLS O*NET-to-NEM crosswalk; where a BLS occupation spans several O*NET occupations, we average their values.
BLS Employment Projections 2025–35
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections program. Occupational projections, 2025–35, and worker characteristics, 2025 (Table 1.2); fastest growing occupations (Table 1.3); factors affecting occupational utilization (Table 1.12).
Vintage: 2025–35 projections, released August 27, 2026. License: Public domain (U.S. federal government work). Retrieved 2026-10-09.
This page includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. Metaintro has modified all or some of this information. USDOL/ETA has not approved, endorsed, or tested these modifications.
Vintage: O*NET 31.0, August 2026 release. License: CC BY 4.0. Retrieved 2026-10-09.
Eloundou, T., Manning, S., Mishkin, P., & Rock, D. (2024). "GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs." Science, 384(6702), 1306–1308. doi:10.1126/science.adj0998. Occupation- and task-level exposure data from the authors' public repository (openai/GPTs-are-GPTs).
Vintage: Published June 21, 2024; human annotations of O*NET tasks collected 2023. License: Data repository: MIT License. Retrieved 2026-10-09.
Anthropic Economic Index (May 2026)
Massenkoff, M., Lyubich, E., Sacher, S., Hitzig, Z., Zhang, S., Heller, R., & McCrory, P. (2026). "Anthropic Economic Index report: Cadences." Anthropic, June 26, 2026. Claude.ai usage metrics by occupation, global, May 2026.
Vintage: Release of June 26, 2026; Claude.ai conversations from May 2026. License: CC BY (data). Retrieved 2026-10-09.
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