A common fear about the job market is that the careers growing the fastest are low-wage service work, and that anything paying well is shrinking. The federal employment projections through 2034 say the reverse. Rank every career by projected growth and the 25 fastest-growing pay a median wage of $97,779, about $16,000 above the $81,804 average across all 385 careers tracked. Eleven of the 25 clear six figures. The fastest-growing job in the country, wind turbine service technician, is projected to add half again as many positions by 2034. Growth and pay, the data shows, mostly travel together.
Are the Fastest-Growing Careers Also the Best-Paid
For the most part, yes. The 25 fastest-growing careers carry a median wage of $97,779, roughly $16,000 higher than the all-careers average, and 11 of them pay $100,000 or more. The growth is not confined to one field either. Healthcare, technology, and finance all appear near the top, which means the booming part of the labor market is broad rather than a single hot sector.
The 25 Fastest-Growing Careers
Each career below is ranked by projected employment growth through 2034, with its median wage and the education typically needed to enter. Growth is the percentage change in employment over the projection window.
| Rank | Career | Growth | Median wage | Entry education |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wind Turbine Service Technicians | 49.9% | $62,580 | Nondegree award |
| 2 | Nurse Practitioner | 40.1% | $129,210 | Master's degree |
| 3 | Data Scientist | 33.5% | $112,590 | Bachelor's degree |
| 4 | Information Security Analyst | 28.5% | $124,910 | Bachelor's degree |
| 5 | Medical and Health Services Manager | 23.2% | $117,960 | Bachelor's degree |
| 6 | Physical Therapist Assistant | 22.0% | $65,510 | Associate's degree |
| 7 | Actuaries | 21.8% | $125,770 | Bachelor's degree |
| 8 | Operations Research Analysts | 21.5% | $91,290 | Bachelor's degree |
| 9 | Physician Assistant | 20.4% | $133,260 | Master's degree |
| 10 | Psychiatric Technicians | 20.0% | $42,590 | Nondegree award |
| 11 | Ophthalmic Medical Technicians | 19.8% | $44,080 | Nondegree award |
| 12 | Computer and Information Research Scientist | 19.7% | $140,910 | Master's degree |
| 13 | Occupational Therapy Assistant | 19.2% | $68,340 | Associate's degree |
| 14 | Financial Examiners | 18.5% | $90,400 | Bachelor's degree |
| 15 | Hearing Aid Specialists | 18.4% | $61,560 | High school diploma |
Wind, health, and data lead the growth
Projected employment growth through 2034, top six fastest-growing careers
Positions 16 through 25 hold the pattern: computer and information systems managers, software developers, financial managers, and speech-language pathologists fill out the list, mixing health, tech, and finance roles that nearly all pay above the national average. Only a handful of the 25, the psychiatric and ophthalmic technician roles, sit below $50,000.
What Separates the High-Pay Growth from the Rest
The split runs along education. The fastest-growing careers that require a bachelor's degree pay far more than the ones that do not, and they make up the bulk of the list. Ten of the top 25 enter at a bachelor's degree and pay a median near $121,000. Seven more require a graduate degree and pay around $110,000. The eight that ask for less than a four-year degree are real growth stories too, but they pay a median closer to $58,000.
That is the real shape of the finding. Fast growth and good pay overlap heavily, but the overlap is thickest where a degree is involved. A student choosing among these careers is mostly choosing how much schooling to trade for the higher wage, not whether a growing field can pay. The exception worth naming is the sub-bachelor's group, where wind turbine technicians, therapy assistants, and similar roles offer double-digit growth without a four-year degree, though at lower pay than their bachelor's-level peers.
How We Measured This
Growth is the projected percentage change in employment for each occupation through 2034, drawn from federal labor projections matched to occupations by SOC code. Median wage is the national median annual wage for the same occupation. The ranking is every career that reports both a growth projection and a median wage, 385 in total, sorted by growth and cut at the top 25. Entry education is the typical level needed to enter the occupation, not the level every worker holds. Full method and source vintages are on the methodology and data sources pages.
What the Numbers Do Not Say
A growth rate is a percentage, and percentages hide scale. Wind turbine service technicians grow 49.9% off a base of about 11,000 jobs, which is a smaller number of new positions than software development adds at 15.8% off a base of 1.6 million. A fast growth rate signals a field on the rise, not necessarily one with many openings, which is why annual openings, including replacement hiring, belong next to the growth figure. The wage shown is a national median that masks wide regional and experience-level spread, and the projection is a forecast, sensitive to technology and policy shifts that no model fully captures. Fast growth raises the odds a field will be hiring. It does not promise a specific person a specific job.
What This Means for Students
The reassuring news is that you rarely have to choose between a field that is growing and one that pays. Most of the fastest-growing careers do both, and the ones that pay the most reward a bachelor's or graduate degree, so the degree is doing real work here rather than serving as a credential for its own sake. Before committing to a major, it helps to trace it forward to the careers it feeds and check their growth and pay together, which is what the Career Path Explorer is built for. If you want the growth without the four-year path, the six-figure careers without a bachelor's degree finding maps the high-pay roles that skip it.
What This Means for Career-Changers
If you are switching fields, growth and pay are the two variables to read together, because a growing field hires more and a high-paying one rewards the switch. The careers on this list cluster in health, technology, and finance, and several have associate-degree or nondegree entry points that make a mid-career move realistic without starting a four-year degree over. Weigh the schooling each path demands against the wage it returns, and treat the growth rate as a tiebreaker between two fields you would otherwise enter equally. To see which of these careers connect to majors you could finish quickly, the finding on majors with high pay and high growth pairs the field of study with the job market it leads into, and the Match Quiz helps narrow the schools that teach them.
