Methodology

To identify the 33 jobs with the best job security and the 33 jobs with the worst job security, 24/7 Wall St. reviewed 2017 unemployment rates for 360 occupations from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We only considered occupations with a labor force of 50,000 or more. Unemployed members of an occupational labor force need to have been last employed in this occupation prior to unemployment. Employment projections from 2016 through 2026 came from the Occupational Outlook Handbook, published annually by the BLS. Typical entry-level education requirement and median annual wage also came from the BLS. Annual wages exclude those of part-time workers in a given profession. Occupations that represent the remainder of a broader classification, defined by the BLS as “all other,” were excluded from our analysis. Data on median annual wage, 10 year projected job growth, and typical educational attainment required was not always available from the BLS for the exact job listed. We used the data for the closest matching occupational categories in some of those cases when possible.