Best Jobs For The Future: If You Want To Get Hired, Look Into Renewable Energy, Health Care

If you can’t find a job, or are working three part-time jobs with low wages, it’s easy to be filled with doom and gloom. But here's some good news: The job market in 2017 is projected to be the healthiest in years.

Given this positive outlook, the best solution to your employment woes might be to change your occupation altogether. But before you decide to switch up your career, you should probably do some research. Here’s a list of the five fastest-growing occupations in the next 10 years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

1. Wind turbine service technicians, or windtechs. Not what you were expecting? Perhaps. But the occupation was set to grow by 108 percent from 2014 to 2024, meaning the industry was expected to add nearly 5,000 jobs over that 10 years, and the pay wasn’t bad, either.

The median pay in 2015 was about $51,000 per year. And if you want to become a windtech, you don’t have to spend four more years getting a bachelor’s degree. Windtechs get their skills from going to technical schools.

2. Occupational therapy assistants and aides, or people who help patients recover and improve their skills before they can head back out into the world. There were about 41,900 people working the job in 2014, and about 16,800 jobs were expected by 2024 — that’s a growth rate of 40 percent.

Median pay was about $54,520 in 2015. To become an occupational therapy assistant, you’ll have to get your associate’s degree, which you can find in many places. In 2014, there were more than 200 accredited programs around the country.

3. Physical therapist aides and assistants, or PTAs. This occupation is exactly what it sounds like: PTAs help physical therapists work with patients who struggle with injury and pain. There were already 128,700 PTAs in the U.S. in 2014, and the occupation was expected to grow by 40 percent by 2024, adding about 51,400 jobs. In 2015, PTAs earned a median salary of $42,980, and much like occupational therapy assistants, PTAs need to get an associate’s degree.

4. Home health aides. These health care workers help people with disabilities and chronic illnesses with their daily living activities. And although they don’t make as much as some of the other occupations — in 2015, the median salary was $21,920 — a ton of jobs were expected to open up. In 2014, there were almost one million home health aides in the U.S., and it’s predicted that around 348,400 more jobs will open up by 2024.

And here’s even more good news for people who can’t afford to go back to school — there are no formal educational requirements to become a home health aide, although most workers have a high school diploma.

5. Nurses — specifically, nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives and nurse practitioners, also known as advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs). People who want to enter this profession generally invest a bit more in their education by earning a master’s degree.

But in the end, that pays off. The median salary for APRNs was $104,740 in 2015 — more than any other occupation on this list. There were about 170,400 people working in this profession in 2014, and by 2024, the industry was expected to grow by about 53,400 positions.