The Employment Picture in Your School Division

Related Posts: Quick Career Facts Education Requirements  Finding Employment Data

In order to plan CTE programs that are relevant to the employment opportunities in your locality, it's important to know what the employment picture in your locality is actually like. Keeping up with trends in industry employment is one way to do this. Fortunately, the Virginia Employment Commission tracks industry employment in all Virginia localities and posts this information on their website, Virginia Workforce Connection. I can help CTE professionals to find and use the VEC's industry data to help plan and evaluate programs.

The table below shows the broad picture of industry employment across the whole state of Virginia. I can replicate this, and provide even more detail on specific industry sub-sectors, for every Virginia city, county, Workforce Investment Area and Community College region. Give me a call if you're looking for more detail on your area.

Agriscience in Carroll County Gives Women A Pathway to STEM Careers

Agriscience Students Ashley Light and Devon Lineberry-Jennings Related Posts: Women and STEM Why Invest in STEM in High School

Traditionally, not many teenage girls elected to study agriculture, but the agriculture department at Carroll County High School is growing thanks, in part, to seniors Ashley Light and Devon Lineberry-Jennings. Both young women were drawn to this subject for different reasons, but now both are certain that they want to make careers in agricultural science and plan on pursuing degrees from Virginia Tech.

Ashley began taking agricultural science classes in the 10th grade because she grew up on a farm, and farming was the way life she had always known:

I decided that I want my career to be in agriculture too because I can't really get away from it; it's just what I've always known. I decided to do food science and technology and go into food safety, so that I can help, because I know how that works on our farm. What we learn in class is like a head start for what I want to do in the future.

Devon had a less direct path into agriculture. Both her parents are writers, so her first exposure to agricultural science was the horticulture class she took on a whim in the 9th grade because she enjoys trying new things:

Practical Nursing: Guys Can Do This Too

Logan Jones and Practical Nursing instructor Debbie Johnson Related Posts: Adding a Practical Nursing Program A Great Career for Guys Read more: More Men in Scrubs

Is nursing really a good option for guys? Logan Jones, senior nursing student at Carroll County High School, says, "Absolutely." He's the only male student in his class, and while that might be an issue for some guys, it doesn't bother Logan because he knows this is the pathway to a solid career.

There's not a whole lot of being bullied or anything like that. I'll get the occasional joke, but I just brush it off like it's nothing. I think a lot of people understand now that if you're going into this kind of work, it's great money and you have great job security. It's a lot better than a lot of other jobs out there, and I just ignore any comments about it.

Education Requirements for Career Clusters

Related Posts: Quick Career Facts Finding Employment Data Career Cluster Predictions Learn About Career Clusters: Clusters at a Glance

When planning CTE programs and when talking to students about their plans for the future, it's important to have a good understanding of the educational requirements for careers. New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) gives us great new information about this. I have put together the BLS findings with additional information about Virginia employment and wages in a handy document, Education Requirements for Career Clusters.

For each of more than 500 careers, the BLS now reports:

The typical education level needed for an entry level job—
        Doctoral or professional degree;
        Master's degree;
        Bachelor's degree;
        Associate's degree;
        Postsecondary non-degree award;
        Some college, no degree;
        High school diploma or equivalent;
        Less than high school.
How much work experience in a related job is needed for entry—
       More than 5 years;
       1-5 years;
       Less than 1 year; or
       None.
The typical on-the-job training needed to attain competency in the occupation—
       Formal internship/residency (such as is required for doctors or teachers);
       Apprenticeship;
       Long-term on-the-job training;
       Moderate-term on-the-job training;
       Short-term on-the-job training; or
       None.

To match occupations to career clusters, I used a system based on one created by The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce as part of research they did to create employment projections for clusters. This research was carried out in conjunction with the National Research Center for Career and Technical Education and the National Association of State Directors of Career and Technical Education Consortium. Their final report, Career Clusters, was released last month, and I will be reporting on it more detail next month.

In order to make this information more useful to CTE professionals, I have combined it with information on the number of people employed in each job in Virginia and their median wages. I also grouped all of the occupations covered by the BLS into career clusters, so it will be easier to match them to CTE programs. For the sake of simplicity, each occupation only appears in one career cluster. This may be a little misleading in the case of some occupations, but it does give a good general picture of the nature of career clusters.

For example, it shows us that most of the jobs in the Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources Cluster require a high school diploma or in some cases less. But the majority of these jobs also require moderate- to long-term on-the-job training, and many also require related work experience. This suggests that it is particularly important to provide CTE agriculture students with cooperative education, internships, and similar experiences with employer partners. Employers seem often to value this kind of hands-on, on the ground experience more than formal education.

By matching education and wage data, we can also see that there is not a simple, straight line correlation between educational attainment and earnings. As a rule, workers with a bachelor's degree earn more than those without — but not always. Recreation workers, radio announcers, reporters, athletic trainers, and probation officers, who all need a bachelor's degree, have lower median wages than mechanical engineering technicians, respiratory therapists, electrical and electronics drafters, and sonographers, who can start work with an associate's degree. Notice that the distinguishing characteristic here is STEM. Workers with scientific and engineering training can usually earn more with less education than those without.