Anyone looking for a job naturally would be interested in what industries will be hiring the most in the coming years, what various occupations pay and what occupations will have the most openings year by year.

The Texas Workforce Commission has all the answers, at least the best educated and scientifically based estimates.

The Austin-based agency last month updated its long-term projections for industry and occupation job growth through 2024, using 2014 as the base year.

The statewide projections, issued every two years, also are calculated for each of the agency’s 28 workforce development areas in the state. The local agency for the 12-county area that includes Bexar County is Workforce Solutions Alamo.

The newly updated tables, online at http://tracer2.com/ (click on “The Future” tab), have good news for the San Antonio area. The 12-county area is projected to see 22.6 percent job growth between 2014 and 2024. That is higher than the state projection of 20.7 percent. The U.S. Department of Labor projects U.S. job growth will be only 6.5 percent over the same 10-year period.

Specifically, the job base in the 12 counties surrounding San Antonio will grow to nearly 1.31 million in 2024 from 2014’s 1.07 million, a gain of 241,730 jobs. Texas’s job base will reach 14.99 million in 2024, up from 2014’s 12.42 million, a gain of nearly 2.57 million.

The Austin area is projected at 26.5 percent job growth for the same period, while Houston is at 22.4 percent and the Dallas area at 21.6 percent.

In other words, the San Antonio-Austin corridor and its surrounding counties are poised for the state’s best job growth over the next eight years.

The Excel spreadsheets are a gold mine of useful information. The data are voluminous, though, covering about 400 industries and about 700 occupations. The numbers come from historic trends, extensive company surveys and analysis models.

One guiding factor to remember was explained in August when Mick Normington, a Texas Workforce Commission business and industry specialist, spoke in Live Oak. Normington explained that the state had shifted since 1990 to health care from manufacturing as the dominant industry.

The 2014-2024 projections for San Antonio bear that out.

The category of health care and social assistance has the highest number change over the decade, a growth of 44,150 jobs from 140,840 in 2024 for an above-average 31.3 percent gain. Most of the growth will come at doctors’ and dentists’ offices and other outpatient clinics with a projected 32.8 percent rise in jobs during the decade. Hospital job growth will be close behind at 31.1 percent.

Leisure and hospitality’s accommodation and food services category is projected to gain 31,450 jobs to reach 141,570 in 2024, a 28.6 percent gain over the decade.

Education services, public and private, is projected for job growth of 27,490 to 100,050 in 2024 for a 27.5 percent gain.

The occupation with the highest number of average annual job openings in the San Antonio area is retail salesperson, with 2,050 positions coming open each year due to growth and replacement at existing positions. The percent job growth is 24.8 percent for the decade.

In a higher-paying category, however, San Antonio will need 1,030 registered nurses for open positions each year, a 30.6 percent jump for the decade, while 995 average annual positions will open for personal care aides at a 34.1 percent increase in openings.

Wages? Pain management wins. Anesthesiologists earned the highest average annual wage in 2015, according to the commission’s data, with annual pay of $278,041, or $133.67 per hour.

In fact, the top four best-paying occupations in 2015 in the San Antonio area were all health care-related. Internists, family or general practitioners and pediatricians all earned more per year than CEOs, whose average compensation in the San Antonio area was $192,309. Surgeons followed with average annual pay of $179,447.

The occupations with the biggest potential growth through 2024 are projected to be office and administrative workers at 31,890 new positions, food preparation or servers at 30,180, sales at 24,360, education or training at 18,430, health care or technical staff at 17,550 and personal care at 14,290.

Industries on the decline through 2024 are led by the federal government, which is expected to eliminate 1,270 positions between 2014 and 2024, a 4 percent decline. Aerospace product and parts manufacturing is projected to lose 780 jobs, a 19.1 percent drop.

Another shrinking industry is “support activities for mining,” meaning energy drilling services, which is projected to lose 960 jobs between 2014 and 2024. That could change as oil prices fluctuate.

The massive information obviously can be useful to people deciding on careers.

“Our area is driven by services, but there may be people who might want to earn more. They may want to upgrade their skills,” said Lydia Elder, Worksource Solutions Alamo business communications specialist.

“The jobs with the highest pay will require more education,” Elder said. But not all good-paying jobs require four-year college degrees, she added. Jobs requiring two-year associate degrees and paying more than $45,000 a year in the San Antonio area are computer network support specialists, dental hygienists, radiologic technologists, respiratory therapists and engineering technicians.

More broadly, companies can find information in the projections when deciding where to place offices or facilities. Educators can better decide where to put schools and how curricula should change. Local governments can better plan roads and transportation. Developers can see what housing demand will be.

Health care, in a broad brush, is the brightest job-growth sector, ranking at the top or near the top in every category. But the new projections show new jobs will appear in healthy numbers in nearly every other category, too. It adds up to a wide spectrum of opportunities.

dhendricks@express-news.net