JOBS

Having a well paying job may not be the only goal of an education, but it has to be one of the main purposes for getting an education. But there is a lot to learn about the job market and how it ties to your education decisions.

Buzz Today Source: The Wall Street Journal The Starbucks Corp attracted 7.6 million applicants over the past 12 months for about 65,000 retail and management positions.

The evidence is clear that the level of your education is closely correlated with unemployment (inversely) and income. We have seen the data before in an earlier www.learnprosper.com post.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

More Education Means More Money Chart, see table below

But in addition to this important general information about the relationship between education and jobs, we want to look at some very specific labor market facts. My goal is to give you data that will help motivate you to actually complete your learning. With an education you radically increase your chances of reaching the job opportunity at the end. This is true whether you stay on the Traditional path or move to the recommended Your Future path.

As discouraging as the BUZZ Today data is about the current job market, the department of labor data on education is very good evidence that you should be doing everything you can to complete your education. It will help you to be able to compete for the jobs.

Some additional data should help encourage you. The very useful book, What Color is Your Parachute provides information even in the face of the tight job market reflected in BUZZ Today. What the book tells us is that in 2012 about 140 million Americans did have jobs. What is most encouraging is just how dynamic the overall job market is. Again from What Color is Your Parachute: In March 2012 4,356,000 people found work and there were 3,737,000 vacancies waiting to be filled. That is a total of 8,093,000 opportunities (p.13). The message is that you don’t have to join the crowded space of millions of others trying to get a job at Starbucks. The challenge you face in the jobs competition is not whether there are jobs to be filled – there are literally millions to be filled every month. The challenge is to decide on the career that fits who you are, get the education you need to compete, then learn how to play the game when hiring companies are faced with the numbers we see in BUZZ Today. More on this in Your Future is Calling and future posts on Learn Prosper.

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