Job opportunities in the United States are awaiting
A practical look at how to compare US occupations, what their workdays actually involve, and which credential or exam stands between you and the job.
By Tobias Lindqvist · Oct 09, 2026 · 9 min read
If you are trying to work out which American occupation fits you, the research is already done and published: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics keeps the Occupational Outlook Handbook, described as "the government's premier source of career guidance" covering "hundreds of occupations—such as carpenters, teachers, and veterinarians" (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, undated). This guide shows you how to use it, what the shifts behind the listings feel like, and what you have to do first.
Pay, licensing and hiring practice all vary by employer and by state, so treat everything here as a map rather than a guarantee.
A Day in the Life
Picture a single weekday spent deciding, not drifting.
7:30 a.m. You open the Occupational Outlook Handbook and use its occupation finder to filter by typical entry-level education and projected percent change of employment for 2025–35 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, undated). You build a spreadsheet with six columns: occupation, 2025 median pay as published, typical entry-level education, on-the-job training, licensing body in your state, and nearest training provider. Three occupations go on the shortlist: solar photovoltaic installer, physical therapist assistant, data scientist.
9:00 a.m. You shadow a residential solar crew. The lead pulls a site plan, chalks rafter lines, and lands L-feet with a impact driver and torque setting checked against the racking manufacturer's spec. Modules go up, MC4 connectors click into strings, and the installer uses a clamp meter to verify open-circuit voltage before the string inverter or microinverters are commissioned. Everyone is in a harness tied to a roof anchor; the crew lead runs a tailboard safety briefing before anyone climbs.
11:30 a.m. An outpatient orthopedic clinic. The physical therapist assistant takes a patient through the exercise plan the physical therapist wrote: goniometer measurements for knee range of motion, gait training with a gait belt, manual therapy, then ultrasound or e-stim. Between patients the assistant documents objective measures and billing units in the electronic medical record, because unbilled time is lost revenue for the clinic.
2:00 p.m. A short video standup with an analytics team. The data scientist pulls a SQL query against the warehouse, cleans the result in a Python notebook with pandas, retrains a model with scikit-learn, logs the run, and writes a plain-English summary for the product manager who will decide what to do with it. Most of the hour is cleaning data, not modeling.
4:30 p.m. You run two informational interviews by phone, asking each person what their first job title was, which credential their employer insisted on, and what they would skip if they started again. Then you register with your state workforce agency's job bank and set alerts for the entry-level titles you heard: installer helper, rehab aide, data analyst.
No two of these shifts share a dress code, a building or a risk profile. That is the point of spending a day sampling them.
Who Thrives in This Career
- If you're good at working from written specs, you'll likely enjoy the racking and torque-spec part of solar installation, where the manufacturer's instructions decide what "correct" looks like.
- If you're good at being comfortable at height and in a harness, you'll likely enjoy the roof work and the climbs that wind turbine service technicians make daily.
- If you're good at measuring the same thing precisely twice, you'll likely enjoy the goniometer and gait-training work a physical therapist assistant repeats across a full patient schedule.
- If you're good at explaining a technical result to someone who will not read the code, you'll likely enjoy the plain-English summary a data scientist writes after retraining a model.
- If you're good at patient, methodical cleanup, you'll likely enjoy the data-wrangling hours in a Python notebook that precede any modeling.
- If you're good at documenting as you go, you'll likely enjoy the electronic medical record charting and billing units that close out each clinical appointment.
- If you're good at reading a schedule and adjusting it when a job overruns, you'll likely enjoy the coordination side of medical and health services management.
- If you're good at noticing when something looks wrong before anyone complains, you'll likely enjoy the voltage checks, tailboard briefings and alert triage that keep installers and information security analysts out of trouble.
Salary, Outlook, and Requirements
The Handbook publishes these figures per occupation and updates them. Look up your shortlisted occupation rather than relying on a number copied into an article.
| Metric | Figure | Source/Year |
|---|---|---|
| Median pay | 2025 median pay is published for each occupation, including nurse practitioners, physician assistants, medical and health services managers, information security analysts, data scientists, physical therapist assistants, solar photovoltaic installers, wind turbine service technicians, and home health and personal care aides; check the current entry for yours | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, fastest-growing occupations table, 27 August 2026 |
| Projected job growth | A projected percent change of employment for 2025–35 is published for each of those occupations, with nurse practitioners listed among those with the highest projected percent change | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 27 August 2026 |
| Projections period | Employment projections cover the 2025–35 decade | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, undated |
| Typical entry-level education | Listed as a separate field for every occupation profile, ranging from high school diploma to master's degree | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, undated |
| Occupations covered | Hundreds of occupations, "such as carpenters, teachers, and veterinarians" | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, undated |
| Update frequency | Revised annually | U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, undated |
Licensing requirements are set state by state and are not included in national pay or growth figures. Employer requirements can also exceed the state minimum.
How to Get Started
- Shortlist three occupations in the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Record, for each, the 2025 median pay, the typical entry-level education and the 2025–35 projected percent change of employment (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 27 August 2026). Drop any occupation whose training length you are not willing to complete.
- Check the licensing rule in the state where you intend to work. Search your state's board of nursing, board of physical therapy or electrical licensing board directly. Clinical paths are exam-gated: registered nurses sit the NCLEX-RN, physical therapist assistants sit the National Physical Therapy Examination for PTAs, and physician assistants sit the PANCE. Trades and tech roles are usually gated by apprenticeship hours or vendor-neutral certification instead.
- Enroll in the specific credential, not a general course. That means an accredited associate degree program for physical therapist assisting, an accredited master's program for nurse practitioner or physician assistant, a community college certificate for photovoltaic or wind technology, or a registered apprenticeship through your state apprenticeship agency, which pays you while you train.
- Take an entry-level job title in the same building as your target. Certified nursing assistant, home health aide, rehabilitation aide, patient access representative, installer helper, IT help desk technician and junior data analyst all put you next to the people who do the job you want and often qualify you for employer tuition support.
- Build one piece of evidence a hiring manager can check. A completed clinical rotation log, an OSHA 10 or OSHA 30 card for construction-side roles, a public code repository with two cleaned datasets and a written analysis, or a documented count of supervised hours.
- Apply through channels that actually list openings: your state workforce agency's job bank, hospital and utility career portals directly, union halls for electrical and construction work, and the career services office of the school that issued your credential. Ask each school for its graduate employment report before you enroll.
- If you are not already authorized to work in the United States, get advice from a licensed immigration attorney before paying for training. Work authorization rules are legal questions, and employers differ in whether they sponsor at all.
Frequently asked questions
How do I find out whether an occupation has openings where I live?
National projections describe the country, not your county. Check your state workforce agency's labor market information pages, which publish regional occupational data, then search employer career portals in your commuting radius and count the live postings yourself over two weeks. Rural areas may have steady clinical and utility work but few analytics roles; large metros usually reverse that pattern.
Can I change careers without going back to school full time?
Often yes, but the ceiling differs. Apprenticeships and evening certificate programs let you earn while training, and some clinical employers fund part-time study for existing staff. Paths that end in a licensed clinical role generally require a full accredited program with scheduled clinical rotations, which is difficult to complete around a full-time job. Ask the program's admissions office about part-time cohorts before assuming.
Which of these jobs can be done remotely?
Anything that touches equipment or a patient cannot. Installation, turbine servicing and hands-on therapy are on-site by definition, and many clinical jobs include evenings, weekends or on-call rotations. Analytics and security work is more often hybrid, but the arrangement is set by the employer, not the occupation, and some organizations have reversed earlier remote policies. Confirm it in writing before accepting.
How much does the training actually cost?
Tuition varies enormously between community colleges, public universities and private programs in the same state, and fees for licensing exams, background checks and immunizations are separate. Registered apprenticeships typically charge little or nothing because the employer funds training. Ask every program for a written total cost of attendance, including books, uniforms and exam fees, then compare that figure against the published median pay for the occupation.
What if I start training and decide the work is not for me?
Better to discover it in week three than year three, which is why shadowing and informational interviews come before enrollment. Credits from an associate degree often transfer toward a related program, and safety cards, certifications and supervised hours usually stay valid. Tell the program's advisor early; they generally know which adjacent pathway accepts the coursework you have already completed.
Sources
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Home : Occupational Outlook Handbook
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Fastest Growing Occupations : Occupational Outlook Handbook (2026-08-27)
Written by
Tobias Lindqvist
Tobias writes on trades, apprenticeships, and the kinds of careers that don't start with a resume. He's interested in skill as a form of dignity, and in how little the discourse around work usually accounts for hands.
