By: Directions Staff
(Jul 30, 2004

The U.S. Department of Labor issued a job growth profile of the Geospatial Technology sector this past May. In the report, they cited several reasons why this sector will experience higher than average job growth over the next several years:

• The worldwide market for geospatial technologies has enormous potential. Estimated at $5 Billion in 2001, the market is expected to have annual revenues of $30 Billion by 2005
• Increasing demand for readily available, consistent, accurate, complete, and current geographic information and the widespread use of advanced technologies...
• The architecture and engineering occupation group, which includes surveyors, cartographers, photogrammetrists, and surveying technicians is one of the 10 occupational groups projected to have the fastest growth of employment between 2002 and 2012. Employment in the architecture and engineering occupation group is expected to grow by 220,000 jobs, led by a 22% increase in landscape architects.

Also, in a speech earlier this year, Emily Stover DeRocco, Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Employment and Training Administration was quoted as follows:

American innovation, invention, and entrepreneurial risk-taking replaced the industries and jobs of the past with new and better jobs and more efficient and productive industries. That process fueled America's economic prosperity, and that process continues today with new industries. One of these industries is the geospatial technology industry, a cluster of commercial activities growing out of the Global Positioning System that certainly helps me every time I find myself in a rental car in an unfamiliar city, and is providing untold benefits to our servicemen and women in faraway places like Afghanistan and Iraq. This new and still undefined industry has a current worldwide market of about $5 billion, and is growing by 10 to 13% per year, a growth rate that is expected to continue throughout this decade. The market is projected to have annual revenues of $30 billion by 2005. A survey of geospatial product and service providers revealed that 87% of respondents said they had difficulty filling positions requiring geospatial technology skills.

If you would like to read the entire report, from the Department of labor, click here.

In other job news, the New York Times is reporting that since the job market bottomed out in August 2003, 1.5 million new payroll jobs have been created. However, this is still over 1 million jobs short of a peak in December 2000. The job sector with the most losses is in the industrial factories, whereas job growth has been most robust in the health care and education, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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