Giving Compass' Take:

• An aging population ensures increasing demand for nurses, who are not easily replaced by automation technology. Nurses are paid well and can expect job security in an uncertain economic future. 

• How can philanthropists get help increase access to education for poor individuals who want to attend nursing school? What groups that are not usually represented in the nursing profession could benefit from these jobs?

• Clean energy jobs offer promising careers in low-income rural areas. 

Roughly a third of all the jobs the U.S. economy is expected to add over the next decade are in the field of healthcare and social assistance. The share of Americans ages 65 and older is on track to double by 2060. As the population grays, nurses are poised to become, in the words of the economist Paul Krugman, “the prototypical worker of the 21st century.” Many jobs materializing in health care, such as home health care aides, will pay very little. But a few years of college education can yield big dividends.

Registered nurses, who typically hold two- or four-year degrees in the field and pass a national licensure exam, earn a median of $68,450.

Nurses may also have greater immunity from the job-destroying creep of automation than some health-care workers. It’s possible that machines could learn to perform the work of radiologists, for example, in the next five years, according to some computer scientists. But because nursing demands interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence, it can’t easily be done by robots, say futurists, medical professionals and technology experts. Instead, the work of nurses may be supercharged by artificial intelligence.

Read the full article about nursing by Caroline Preston at The Hechinger Report.