The best jobs follow the hottest markets: medicine, consulting and the e-conomy. But more than anything, they follow the retiring Baby Boomers.

How do you determine the most promising jobs for the next decade? You follow the clearest trends. An aging workforce means more need for cheap medicine. Global competition means more work for consultants with management experience. The Web economy means more jobs for the Web-savvy.

But if you're looking for one trend to follow, follow the boomers. The best paying, fastest growing jobs will grow up around one of the richest and fastest growing segments of the population: the retiring Baby Boom generation.

24/7 Wall St. reviewed the Bureau of Labor Statistics' National Employment Matrix, which projects job growth between 2008 and 2018 among 750 categories. We then identified the jobs expected to add the largest number of new positions and selected those with the highest median annual income -- at least $60,000. These reflect the best-paying jobs with the highest demand for new workers in the future.

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Read more from our Labor Day special report: The Future of Work.

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