Women have been steadily flocking to six-figure roles in traditionally male-dominated industries like healthcare and engineering, according to a new report from Resume Genius analyzing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Engineering jobs often require rigorous coursework if not a higher degree, and the scarcity of qualified engineers means employers are willing to pay high wages. Notably, the engineering field with the lowest mid-career median wage is still in the six-figure range.
Mid-career women with at least five years' experience are being overlooked for digital roles in the tech and financial and professional services sectors, where they are traditionally underrepresented, according to the report by the City of London Corporation. The governing body that runs the capital's Square Mile found female applicants were discriminated against by rigid, and sometimes automated, screening of their CVs, which did not take into account career gaps related to caring for children or relatives, or only narrowly considered their professional experience.
I can honestly say that if I was 18 now, there is no way I would go to university only to leave with huge debts and poor job prospects. Instead, I would become an electrician or similar trade.
Many of them say that AI's ascendance is already reducing demand for human researchers who can write code or do basic data analysis - tasks often handled by graduate students, postdocs or those without graduate training. Obsolescence of some basic roles in areas such as computer modelling "is not even in the future. It's happening now," says Xuanhe Zhao, a mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, because "AI is doing this much better than entry-level scientists".
Business Insider looked at wages and growth projections for jobs that usually need a high school diploma, its equivalent, or a postsecondary nondegree award. We then took the geometric mean of the ones that pay at least $75,000, based on 2024 median annual wage data, and are expected to need more workers, based on projected employment growth from 2024 to 2034. We then ranked the jobs, with the larger the geometric mean, the better the rank.
Job insecurity is real: More than half of American workers (54%) say insecurity about their job is causing significant stress at work, while more than a third (39%) say they worry they about losing their job due to changes in government policies, according to the American Psychological Association's 2025 Work in America survey. Layoffs are reportedly at an all-time high since 2009, along with the lowest hiring on record in the U.S.
Young people are "experiencing higher education differently, and that is shaping much of what parents are saying," said Lammers. "[Parents] are reacting to the questions their children are asking and trying to find the best way to help them navigate the next steps."
While many assume formal learning is limited to a bachelor's or master's degree, both the CEO of VC firm General Catalyst, Hemant Taneja, and McKinsey's top executive, Bob Sternfels, say that's not the case anymore. Employees must skill and re-skill constantly to stay afloat, said Taneja, whose VC firm has invested in companies such as Anduril and Anthropic. Taneja discussed this during a live taping of the All-In podcast, hosted by entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis Tuesday at CES 2026,
