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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- About three in 10 Americans hold a high school diploma as their highest level of education, and there are hundreds of occupations available to them.
- Home health and personal care aides top the list of jobs with the most openings for high school graduates.
- Among the jobs with the most expected openings, first-line supervisors of office and administrative support workers will typically earn the most.
Home health and personal care aides will have the most openings for workers with a high school diploma or GED over the next decade, with about 765,800 openings expected each year through 2034, according to new projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
However, just because these jobs will have the most openings doesn’t mean they’re the highest-paying. If you want to earn more, other high-school-level jobs pay significantly better. Here’s what the BLS data shows.
Why This Matters
In 2022, about 28% of Americans aged 25 years and older had completed high school as their highest level of schooling, according to Census Bureau data. Especially as more recent high school graduates are opting out of college, knowing which job options will be available can help graduates make decisions about their careers.
What Are The Best Options For High School Graduates?
Home health and personal care aides generally “monitor the condition of people with disabilities or chronic illnesses and help them with daily living activities,” according to the BLS. Openings for care aides are expected to grow 17% from 2024 to 2034, with about 765,800 openings each year.
These positions typically require a high school diploma, but in some cases, no formal education is required. However, some workers in certified home health or hospice agencies may need to complete some training or pass a standardized test.
The median wage for care aides in 2024 was about $34,900 per year, or $16.78 per hour, lower than the median annual wage for all occupations, which was $49,500 in 2024.
First-line supervisors of office and administrative support workers offer the best combination of expected openings and income. These workers oversee clerical and administrative staff and earned a median wage of $66,140 in 2024, about $17,000 more than the median for all occupations.
The most common employers for these supervisors are banks and lending institutions. Top earners in the field can make up to $136,070, particularly in pipeline transportation of natural gas.
Customer service representatives and office clerks round out the top three, with about 350,000 and 300,000 openings expected each year, respectively. The rest of the top 10 spans a mix of industries: secretaries and administrative assistants, food service supervisors, security guards, child care workers, maintenance and repair workers, and assemblers and fabricators.
Together, the top 10 jobs are expected to account for about four out of 10 openings at the high school level, according to the BLS, which projects about 19 million job openings each year across the entire economy through 2034, mostly from replacing workers who leave the labor force or switch careers—not from newly created positions.
