Looking for work? These are the fastest growing jobs in NJ

If you’re looking for work, contemplating a change in career or trying to figure out what field to go into, perhaps you ought to consider health care.

The career resource site Zippia crunched data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to develop a top 10 fastest growing jobs in the Garden State list. They are:

RANK   JOB                               GROWTH             AVERAGE WAGE     JOBS IN 2024

1 Home Health Aides                        44.97%                      $23,020                  51,000

2 Operations Research Analysts     36.28%                      $101,490                  2,930

3 Physical Therapist Assistants       35.94%                      $62,490                   1,740

4 Physical Therapist Aides              3118%                        $26,870                   4,880
.
5 Physical Therapists                      29.44%                       $95,150                   9,760

6 Nurse Practitioners                      28.18%                       $111,090                  4,230

7 Ambulance Drivers/ Attendants, 26.92%                        $25,910                   1,650
Except EMTs
8 Physician Assistants                 26.09%                         $109,310                  2,320

9 Occupational Therapists         22.87%                           $89,960                    4,620

10 Helpers–Electricians            22.73%                            $30,350                    1,620

“We’ve looked at the fastest growing jobs in a lot of states and typically it’s across the board: a little bit of tech, a little bit of healthcare, a little bit of blue collar stuff. But in New Jersey it appears it’s mostly healthcare,” said Nick Johnson, a spokesman for Zippia.

He pointed out nine out of the 10 fastest growing jobs are health related.

“You’ve got everything from home health aides to physical therapists to nurse practitioners, physician assistants to ambulance drivers, and that suggests if you want to be in with what’s going on with job growth you should go into healthcare, especially when it comes to one on one healthcare,” he said.

Johnson noted many of these top 10 jobs do not take specialized training.

“You don’t have to get a Ph.D or even go to medical school — a lot of this stuff is stuff you can learn or practice without having to get a formal education,” he said.

He pointed out the jobs on the list won’t pay as well as what a physician will earn – in the $70 to $100 an hour category. “But if you wanted to be a physical therapist assistant you could probably make about $50,000 a year, if you were going to be a nurse practitioner you can obviously make a little more, $75,000 dollars a year.”

The fastest growing job, home health aide is not very lucrative.

“Home health aides don’t pay very well, you can make anywhere in between $20,000 and $30,000 a year. You’re not going to be high paid, but you are going to be in high demand,” he said.

Johnson noted the only top 5 job on the list that is not in the healthcare field is operations research analyst.

“It’s just a fancy way of saying folks that work with code, developing back-end software, engineering type jobs,” he said.

“The good news with that is you don’t have to actually go to get a degree in computer science, you can actually self teach yourself a lot of back-end code.”

Zippia is a career resource site that helps Millennials figure out what job opportunities exist in which fields.

You can contact reporter David Matthau at David.Matthau@townsquaremedia.com.

Also on New Jersey 101.5: