These women-dominated, high-paying jobs are growing the fastest this decade

Alliance Images // Shutterstock After the COVID-19 pandemic triggered an exodus of women from the workforce, largely due to inaccessible child care and a heteronormative culture where women remain the default caretakers, a record number are now participating in the U.S. economy again. Their increased representation compared to before the pandemic is a trend that’s sustained even as the labor market cooled off in recent months. Over the next decade, demand for a number of women-dominated jobs paying six figures or more is forecast to rise at an above-average pace. JobTest.org used Bureau of Labor Statistics data to identify the highest-paying, women-dominated jobs projected to grow the fastest over the next decade. The analysis looks at jobs where at least half of employees were women and where typical earnings were 1.5 times the median for all occupations. Those occupations were then ranked by the 10 forecast to grow the fastest. The modern growth of women in the workforce has been propelled by a trend in women achieving higher rates of college education than men and the shifting makeup of formerly male-dominated fields, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. Some of the fastest-growing jobs with the highest pay for women through the next decade include those long stereotyped as “women’s roles,” partly because they involve elements of nurturing or caretaking. Nursing and speech-language pathology, which has historically focused on working with children, are among them. These fields, however, require highly skilled workers and are also projected to benefit the women working in them. The Department of Labor forecasts that they’ll see outsized growth in demand in the coming years, driven by an aging population that will require more nursing care and speech therapy for older generations that develop conditions affecting their motor skills. That high demand for medical roles and others in fields like finance and business operations may contribute to even higher wage increases, just as it did for nursing during the pandemic’s peak. Even in high-paying, fast-growing fields, wage gaps persist