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未来最热门的职业会是哪些？

　　Predicting the jobs or skills that will be in demand years from now is a tricky task for many teens, young adults and their parents. Luckily, there are rich sources of information on the Web, in books, and in most people's communities; the challenge is to sift through them all。

　　预测从现在起数年后紧缺的职业或技能对于许多青少年和他们的父母而言是一项棘手的任务。幸运的是，从网络、书籍和多数人所在的社区中都能获得丰富的信息，困难在于逐一筛选这些信息。

　　Ms. McDonald found her passion through a community-college nanotechnology program funded by the National Science Foundation, where one official foresees hundreds of thousands of job openings in the field in the next five years. Other sources include government forecasts, school or college career counselors, and neighbors and friends employed in growing fields。

　　麦克唐纳是在美国国家科学基金会资助开设的社区学院纳米技术课程上发现她的职业兴趣的，该基金会中的一名官员预测，在未来5年中，该领域内将出现数十万个工作机会。其它信息来源包括政府预测、中高等院校的职业顾问和在成长型行业中工作的邻居与朋友们。

　　The richest vein of job-growth information is the Labor Department's 10-year forecast for demand, pay and competition for more than 300 jobs in 45 categories. The department's latest biannual compilation, published last month as the 'Occupational Outlook Handbook,' is great for sizing up the long-term outlook for most fields. The forecasts have often been prescient--accurately predicting this decade's fast growth in special-education teaching jobs and the widening range of hot health-care careers, for example。

　　最丰富的就业增长信息渠道是美国劳工部对45类、300多种职业的需求、薪酬与竞争情况的10年预测。美国劳工部上个月发布的最新半年编《职业前景手册》对大多数职业领域的长期前景进行了权威预测。这项预测通常是很有预见性的──举例来说，它准确地预测出了这十年中特殊教育教学职位的快速增长和热门医疗职业范围的扩大。

　　In the coming decade, engineering--already known for paying college graduates some of the highest starting salaries--is expected to offer the fastest-growing area: biomedical engineering. Jobs in this field, which centers on developing and testing health-care innovations such as artificial organs or imaging systems, are expected to grow by 72%， the Labor Department says。

　　预计在未来十年中，工程学──已知的大学毕业生起薪最高的行业之一──将出现就业增长最快的领域：生物医学工程。该领域内的职位集中于开发和测试医疗创新，例如人造器官或成像系统。据美国劳工部称，这些职位的需求预计将增长72%。

　　Among other professions, job opportunities for physicians should be "very good," the guide says; health care dominates the list of the fastest-growing jobs, capturing 11 of the top 20 slots. While more attorneys and architects will be needed, competition for these jobs will be intense. Psychologists will be in demand, but growth will be fastest in industrial and organizational psychology。

　　这份指南称，在其它行业中，医生的就业机会应会“非常好”；在需求增长最快的职业列表中，主要都是医疗类职业，它们在前20位中占据了11位。尽管未来也将需要更多律师和建筑师，但这些职业的竞争将非常激烈。市场对心理学家也有需求，但需求增长最快的职业将是工业心理学和组织心理学。

　　The forecasts have limitations. The Labor Department's macroeconomic model works on two noteworthy assumptions--that the economy will rebound to long-term growth and that there won't be any more big shocks like the 2007-2008 recession. Thus its forecasts don't predict the big job-market swings or sudden changes in the supply of workers that can easily happen in a volatile economy。

　　这些预测也有局限性。美国劳工部的宏观经济模型建立在两个重要假设的基础之上──一是经济将反弹并实现长期增长，二是不会再出现像2007-2008年经济衰退那样的大型冲击。因此，它无法预测出经济不稳定时容易发生的就业市场大幅波动或劳动力供给的突然变化。

　　That means you could pick a job from the Labor Department's "fastest-growing" list when you enter college, only to find the field in a slump by the time you graduate. For example, a 2006 high-school graduate eyeing the government's 2004-2014 forecast for nursing at that time would have read about excellent job prospects, with "thousands of job openings" predicted because experienced nurses were expected to retire。

　　这意味着可能会发生这种情况：当你进入大学时，从劳工部的“需求增长最快的职业”名单中选好了一种职业，但当你毕业时，却发现这一行业的需求锐减。例如，一名2006届高中毕业生浏览美国政府发布的2004-2014年护理行业预测时，会看到当时对该职业前景的预测很乐观，理由是资深护士即将退休，因而预计会产生“成千上万的工作机会”。

　　While that forecast is likely to hold for the long term, the job market for students graduating from college this year is headed in the opposite direction: Thousands of experienced nurses who had been inactive or retired have been re-entering the work force because of the recession。

　　尽管该预测在长期很可能是正确的，但对于今年毕业的大学生而言，就业市场的走势却恰好相反：由于经济衰退，成千上万本已不再工作或退休的资深护士重新进入了劳动力市场。

　　Similarly, a high-school grad in 2000 might have picked computer programming--No. 8 at the time on a government list of fast-growing, high-paying jobs--only to graduate to the aftermath of the dot-com collapse。

　　类似地，2000届高中毕业生可能会选择计算机编程专业──当时计算机编程在美国政府发布的高增长、高薪酬职业名单中排名第八──但当他们毕业时，却遭受了网络泡沫破灭的冲击。