I have an 18 year old grand daughter who asked me what I thought she should get a 2 year degree in if the 3 most important things were decent pay, job security, and a job that I thought she could be good at doing? I asked her to give me a few days to think about it and after doing about 12 hours of research, my best answer based on a 10 year projection, (mostly Department of Labor stats) was Diagnostic Medical Sonographer or Speech Pathologist with 30% projected growth rate, 40-50,000 projected new jobs and pay scale of $55-75k . In all, the broad field of Nuclear Medicine had projections for 100-200,000 new jobs created. I didn't see any other fields that were in the same ballpark as these projections. If I told her to be a HPT, job growth was 1-5,000 positions for a 10-20% job growth rate with similar projected earnings. Also, a large percentage of the HPT positions are temporary and require the individual to adopt a nomadic lifestyle in order to work full time.
I also considered that I have been in Radiation Protection for over 30 years and that I have never had any problem finding a job in this business for somebody with the applicable A/S and that my connections would be of very little use to her with an A/S in the medical field. And then I thought about the things that were missing from my grand daughter's criteria - like job satisfaction because the work you are doing matters on a very personal level; and I told her to get into the medical field. Increasing government involvement in medical care will create more havoc, but hospitals and good people to staff them will always be needed.