The Top Jobs employing the most people in the region tend to be foundational occupations that support major industries and everyday business operations. Many are roles that exist across multiple sectors – including healthcare professionals, teachers, managers, administrative staff, and transportation workers – reflecting the broad functions required to sustain the regional economy.

These occupations span both degree-based professions and middle-skill roles, indicating that the region’s largest employment opportunities are not concentrated at a single education level. Instead, they include a mix of credentialed careers, such as nursing and teaching, alongside operational roles that support logistics, maintenance, construction, and business services.

Another common characteristic is steady and ongoing demand. While some of these occupations show moderate growth, their high employment levels are often driven by the essential nature of the work and the need to replace retiring workers or fill roles with higher turnover. Together, these occupations represent the core workforce that keeps the region’s industries operating and meeting the needs of residents and businesses.

The fastest-growing Top Jobs in the region reflect a mix of specialized technical roles, emerging industries, and niche professional occupations. These include positions tied to advanced manufacturing, energy, data and technology, and select areas of healthcare and education. 

Compared with the occupations employing the largest number of workers, these roles are typically more specialized and education-intensive, often requiring a bachelor’s degree or advanced credential. They also tend to offer strong wage potential, reinforcing their role as high-opportunity career pathways. 

Unlike high-employment occupations, where demand is often driven by turnover and replacement needs, growth in these roles appears to be fueled more by structural changes in the economy — including advances in technology, shifts in energy production, and increasing demand for specialized expertise. Together, these occupations highlight where new workforce demand and evolving skill needs are emerging in the region. 

The skills analysis in this report uses Lightcast’s occupational skills framework, which categorizes skills based on how they relate to a specific occupation rather than simply how often they appear in job postings. This approach helps reveal the capabilities required to perform and advance within different roles.

Lightcast groups occupational skills into three categories:

• Necessary Skills: Foundational capabilities required for the occupation and common across similar roles
• Defining Skills: Core skills that reflect the day-to-day tasks and responsibilities of the job
• Distinguishing Skills: Advanced or specialized skills that appear less frequently but can help workers differentiate themselves or move into more specialized roles

By examining skills through this framework, the analysis highlights not only what employers request most often, but also the capabilities that truly define the work performed in each occupation.

Top Skills by Category

Across the region’s Top Jobs, several skills appear consistently, reflecting the operational, managerial, and customer-facing work that supports the regional economy.

Among Necessary Skills, hand tools, auditing, and marketing appear most frequently across occupations. This mix highlights the region’s combination of skilled trades and business-oriented roles, where practical technical abilities and core business functions both play an important role.

For Defining Skills, project management, construction, and marketing stand out. These skills point to the importance of coordinating projects, managing operations, and supporting business development across industries ranging from construction and logistics to professional services.

Among Distinguishing Skills, phone sales and direct selling emerge as the most common specialized capabilities. These skills reflect the continued importance of relationship-based sales and customer engagement in many of the region’s high-opportunity occupations.

Taken together, the region’s Top Jobs rely on a blend of technical proficiency, operational management, and business development skills, highlighting the diverse capabilities needed to support both established industries and emerging economic opportunities.

Top Jobs in the region span a range of education pathways, with strong opportunities available at multiple levels. The largest share of roles require either a high school diploma (about 35%) or a bachelor’s degree (about 32%), reflecting the region’s mix of skilled trades, operational roles, and professional careers.

A smaller share of occupations require advanced degrees (about 15%), while postsecondary certificates and associate degrees together account for roughly 14% of Top Jobs. Only a small portion require no formal education.

Overall, the data show that high-quality career opportunities in the region are accessible through both college and workforce training pathways, highlighting the importance of multiple routes into the labor market.

The demographic composition of workers in the region’s Top Jobs differs from that of the broader population. Overall, Top Jobs skew slightly more White, less Black, and less Hispanic, and workers in these roles tend to be older and somewhat more male than the regional workforce overall. 

These differences also appear when examining wages and job characteristics. Occupations that are predominantly White (70%+ White) have median hourly wages averaging about $40, compared with about $37 for more racially diverse occupations. Among jobs that are 80%+ White, the average median wage rises to around $41 per hour, while all other occupations average about $38 per hour. 

Many of the highest-paying occupations — including specialized professional and technical roles such as veterinarians, financial advisors, and sales engineers — tend to have higher education requirements and lower racial and ethnic diversity. By contrast, occupations with stronger Black or Hispanic representation more often fall in transportation, service, or operational roles that typically require less formal education but also offer lower wages. 

Together, these patterns suggest that representation narrows in many of the region’s highest-paying occupations, highlighting the importance of expanding education, training, and career pathways that connect a broader range of workers to high-opportunity careers.