Workers in certain industries can have more comfort in knowing that, even if they are fired, there is so much demand they should be able to find another job very quickly.

Talk of a recession and creeping unemployment rates are enough to make you wonder: Where can you find stability in unstable times? Kiplinger consulted career experts and combed through job trend data to come up with five industries that should provide safer havens to workers, no matter what the economy is doing. No matter what field you work in, you have the possibility of losing your job. But there are things you can do to protect yourself and increase your odds of getting another job, just in case.

Healthcare  
Many of the nation’s fastest-growing careers are in the health care industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. An increasingly aging population fuels demand in this field. Some specific jobs with stable prospects include doctor, nurse, pharmacist, physical therapist and physician assistant.

Education
Teachers for any grade level who specialize in high-demand fields such as math, science or bilingual education should have an easier time finding and keeping a job. And the outlook for college instructors looks stable, too. College enrollment is rising as the number of 18- to 24-year-olds increases. Some areas of the country are more stable than others for teachers because education jobs follow population trends. So teachers in fast-growing states in the South and West, such as Nevada, Arizona, Texas and Georgia, will have more opportunity than in slower-growth areas in the Midwest and Northeast.

Security
Crime doesn’t stop in a recession. That makes security jobs, such as police officers, detectives, private security guards and international security experts, a good bet. Layoffs in this industry are rare. In the off-chance law enforcement officers lose their jobs to budget cuts, they have little difficulty finding jobs with other agencies because demand is so high.

Environmental Sciences
The current “green” movement reaches far beyond changing your light bulbs to fluorescents. It’s also translating into a solid career choice. The BLS expects environmental careers, including ecologists, hydrologists, environmental chemists and others, to grow 25% over the next decade.

Government
Some of the most stable jobs around are within the federal government, where firings and lay-offs happen at just one-quarter the rate in the private sector. One reason: Even in hard economic times when big businesses are forced to downsize, the government must carry on. And only one in every 5,000 non-defense workers is ever fired for poor performance each year. Crazy odds! Due to an increasingly aging workforce, the government is doing a lot of hiring lately, especially among the 20-something crowd.

What perks would drive a normal person to consider the graveyard shift? 

Money money money! Yet money isn’t the only benefit. There are other intangibles, like greater autonomy, fewer meetings (all the higher-ups are sleeping!) and the likelihood of getting promoted sooner since there are less people to compete against.

1. Registered Nurse (RN)
Day Shift: $54,500 annually
Night Shift: $55,700 annually

2. Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN)
Day Shift: $36,300
Night Shift: $38,400

3. Certified Nurse Assistant (CNA)
Day Shift: $22,200
Night Shift: $22,600

4. Truck Driver
Day Shift: $31,300
Night Shift: $36,000

5. Bartender
Day Shift: $24,600
Night Shift: $31,200

6. Waiter/Waitress
Day Shift: $16,500
Night Shift: $22,500

7. Verizon telephone operator
Day shift: $890 weekly
Night shift: $979 weekly

8. Television writer/ news writer
Writers on the night shift get a 15% differential hourly rate.

9. Nanny
Night nannies generally start their shift at 2 p.m. and work until 10 p.m. They receive about 20% more than daytime nannies

10. Pharmacist
Median Total Cash Compensation: $97,700
Night Shift: differential varies significantly, from 2% to 10%

Have you ever flipped through a Men’s Health magazine?  

The book, “Eat This, Not That!” by Men’s Health editor-in-chief David Zinczenko writes about food choices at favorite restaurants, supermarkets and holiday items. The book includes a clever ranking of the country’s 20 worst foods in various categories. Here are some of them: 

Can Growth In Education and Health Save The Day?

640,000 new jobs from education and healthcare were created last year. Propelled by aging baby boomers and rising student enrollments, hospitals and schools are still hiring while almost everyone else is cutting back.

Could adding more nurses, teachers, and hospital orderlies really hold off a recession? The answer is yes. What people don’t realize is that health and education combined make up the single largest source of jobs in the U.S., employing 28 million people, or about 20% of the total workforce. What’s more, government funds support many of these jobs, either directly or indirectly, making them less subject to the business cycle. The hidden danger now is that fading tax revenues may cause state and local governments to cut back on their funding for schools and medical care.
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When Is It Time For Financial Intervention, Mom and Dad?

When does it make sense to search for a planner for your parents? In Jennifer Openshaw’s opinion, right now. It doesn’t matter what age or stage they’re at. Problem is, the majority of Americans wait until a crisis or retirement hovers over them to take action.

You can always use a triggering event to broach the topic, such as:

• A divorce

• An illness, even a short-term one. “What if this had been more serious?”

• Loss of income, even if minor. “What if [the primary breadwinner] lost his job?”

• A refinancing or a new loan. “Why did you need to refinance? Are you having some financial pressures?”

• Unpaid credit cards, other bills - a sign of trouble

Openshaw believes the keys to success in making this happen are:

1.) Remove yourself from the process. Don’t assume that just because you’ve been down the financial-planning road or invested your money yourself that you’re the one to handle it for your parents.

2.) Bring in an independent, fee-only adviser. Most advisers will only talk to you if you have $500,000 or $1 million in assets. That is, unless they sell commission-based products. Opt for an adviser geographically close to your parents, and one who is truly objective - meaning, they’ll charge by the hour, as high as $400 depending on where you live.

As part of her search, Openshaw developed a mini-RFP (request for proposal) that outlined my requirements (location, experience, references) and her needs. Those needs might include any of the following:

• Cash-flow (budgeting)

• Retirement planning

• Investments

• Insurance (life, but maybe long-term, too)

• Taxes

3.) Give them a say in the decision. Don’t forget to allow your parents the opportunity to meet and give the “go-ahead” with your planner.

Each of the following mistakes can cost you $100,000.

1.) Investing too conservatively during retirement. If you follow conventional wisdom and, as you approach retirement, shift money out of stocks into more stable investments you could miss many opportunities. Instead of parking too much of your assets in bonds, invest in an asset mix that leaves enough room for Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index.

2.) Launching a divorce war. A full courtroom showdown can easily cost $250,000. Try to soften the financial impact by using a lower-cost mediation option. Or try to work on saving your marriage.

3.) Underinsuring your home. If you’ve lived in the same house for at least 10 years, it’s probably worth 50% to 100% more than you paid for it. But if you haven’t updated your homeowners insurance, you could lose those gains if disaster strikes. Ask your insurer to reassess your home’s replacement cost and adjust coverage accordingly.

4.) Overpaying for your mortgage. The annual percentage rates on mortgages in a given area can vary by close to a percentage point. Over a typical 30-year term, this can cost you $27,000 on a $299,000 home. Shop for the best mortgage rate by checking local banks, your credit union, big-lender Web sites and mortgage-related sites.

5.) Maintaining an unhealthy lifestyle. Bad health habits not only catch up with you as you age but they can also hit you in the pocketbook in the form of higher life-insurance premiums. Before you apply for life insurance, consult your doctor about the best way to get your health status in line with the “preferred plus” underwriting requirements.

6.) Paying needless fund fees. If you buy mutual funds from a broker, you could pay a commission, or “load,” of up to 5.75%. Annual expenses can also vary among funds, from 1.5% or more a year to as little as 0.1%. Fix: Choose no-load mutual funds with low expense ratios. You can buy them directly from investment companies such as Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, and Vanguard.

 How Well Are You Dealing With Stress?

One-third of Americans are living with extreme stress and nearly half of Americans (48%) believe that their stress has increased over the past five years. Stress is taking a toll on people — contributing to health problems, poor relationships and lost productivity at work, according to a new national survey released today by the American Psychological Association (APA).

Money and work continue as the leading causes of stress for three quarters of Americans. Nearly half of all Americans report that stress has a negative impact on both their personal and professional lives. Stress causes more than half of Americans (54%) to fight with people close to them. One in four people report that they have been alienated from a friend or family member because of stress, with 8% connecting stress to divorce or separation.

Stress in America continues to escalate and is affecting every aspect of people’s lives — from work to personal relationships to sleep patterns and eating habits, as well as their health. Physical symptoms of stress include: fatigue); headache; upset stomach; muscle tension; change in appetite; teeth grinding; change in sex drive and feeling dizzy.  Psychological symptoms of stress include: experiencing irritability or anger,  feeling nervous, lack of energy and feeling as though you could cry.  In addition, almost half (48%) of Americans report lying awake at night due to stress.

While many Americans recognize that stress has a negative impact on their health, they may lack the motivation to make lifestyle and behavior changes. Only 35% report that they would modify their behavior following the diagnosis of a chronic condition. Encouragement from a spouse or partner would motivate 38% to make behavioral changes.

I have to agree that there is a lot of pressure to specialize.

1. “They should put me on the endangered-species list.”   A good primary-care doctor (someone to coordinate your health care, help choose your specialists and be the first to diagnose just about any problem) is the key to good medical treatment. But they’re getting harder to come by. Why? Fewer med students are going into primary care: Interest is so low that the number of primary-care internal medicine residency positions dropped by more than 50% in the past decade.

2. “I’m the pauper of my profession.” One big reason fewer medical students are specializing in primary care is pure and simple economics. In 2006 primary-care doctors earned an average of $171,519. That might sound like a lot to most working people, but it’s less than half of what dermatologists made that same year. And the call of more-lucrative specialities is only likely to get louder for today’s residents: According to one study, the income of primary-care doctors, adjusted for inflation, actually fell by 10% between 1995 and 2003.

3. “Sorry, your 12 minutes are up.” Some doctors are able to see 40 patients a day. That’s one every 12 minutes. And it doesn’t show signs of slowing: According to one survey the average number of patients doctors saw grew by 7.5% from 2004 to 2005. While this system isn’t inherently bad, it can be abused. Assistants may have a different philosophy from the doctor, leading them to treat problems differently as well. Communication can break down, causing confusion about medications, and a misdiagnosis by an assistant is always possible.

4. “I hawk for Big Pharma in my spare time.” Your physician relies on his best judgment when deciding what drugs to prescribe. And influencing that judgment is big business. Market-research firm IMS has found that the pharmaceutical industry spends $7.2 billion a year targeting doctors with ads and sales representatives.  Drug companies know doctors are more likely to take their cues from other doctors, so they sponsor weekend seminars at expensive resorts featuring presentations by physicians.

5. “Sore throat? You might be better off going to the mall.”  Walk-in clinics are springing up across the country. They’re run by nurse practitioners, who diagnose simple maladies, like strep throat or flu, and provide prescriptions, medical advice or referrals if the problem is beyond their scope. These clinics have caught on in part because they’re fast and don’t require an appointment. They’re also cheap — $40 to $60 a visit, versus $150 for a doctor or $300 for an ER visit — and many take insurance. Today there are about 460 such clinics, but analysts expect the number to jump to 4,000 by 2009.

6. “I hate technology.” Primary-care physicians have been slow to adopt the technology: A recent study found that only 28% use these systems. Why? They can cost up to $70,000, and cash-strapped GPs see little payoff. For most patients the benefits of the technology are huge. It eliminates prescription errors due to illegible handwriting. It ensures that patients get the right dosage. Records won’t get lost. It reminds doctors when they need to monitor their patients. And specialists and others can easily forward electronic records to your GP.

7. “Your insurance company is calling the shots.” These days doctors have more freedom to send you to a specialist or order expensive tests than they once did under managed care. But that doesn’t mean the system is fixed. With increased deductibles, it’s often the patient who foots the bill for a referral or an expensive test. Insurers also still wield the power when it comes to hospital stays.

8. “My legal history is none of your business.” Today’s insurance plans give patients a wider range of doctors to choose from, but patients don’t have any more information to help them decide. The best information about doctors is off-limits to patients. It’s the National Practitioner Data Bank, which state medical boards and hospitals use to do background checks, and it includes information on disciplinary actions and malpractice payments. The best publicly available information is tracked by state medical boards, many of which publish this information on their Web pages. If yours doesn’t, you can pay $9.95 for a report from DocInfo.org, a site run by the Federation of State Medical Boards.

9. “If you’re over 65, don’t bother me…” Doctors who specialize in geriatrics are increasingly rare. Right now there is just one geriatrician in the U.S. for every 5,000 seniors, about half of what we should have, according to the American Geriatrics Society. Treating older patients who have multiple, often complex problems is about the worst way a doctor can make a living. Medicare doesn’t compensate much more for a 45-minute appointment with a patient with dementia, hearing loss and a half-dozen other maladies than it does for seeing someone for a simple checkup.

10. “…unless, of course, you’re willing to pay extra.” Unfortunately, the shortage of geriatricians is worsening. The American Geriatrics Society estimates that by 2030, there will be a shortage of about 36,000 geriatricians in the U.S., up from 7,000 today. Though the situation seems dire, there are ways to guarantee qualified care. One approach is to see a good primary-care doctor who is also a geriatrician long before you need one. Other approaches can be costly. In Sarasota, Fla., many doctors provide “concierge” service: Patients pay an annual retainer of about $4,000 in exchange for their doctor’s cell number and upgraded access. These pricey options aren’t what most people have in mind when they think of health care reform, but they may be the only way to maintain ready access to a good doctor.

Many parents say they will do anything for their children. But that doesn’t mean you have to go out on a financial precipice. Median Price Per Child: $338,000  

Children born in the U.S. today will cost their parents more than $338,000, on average, by the time they graduate from a public college. Send your precious offspring to a private university, and you can expect to shell out an additional $70,300 for tuition. Think education is your only big tab? Think again. Just keeping a roof over junior’s head will cost nearly $105,000 through age 18. Food will eat up $41,400, and health care will set you back $17,400 over 18 years.

Experts say the best way to plan for many of the biggest expenditures, be it college, vacations, child care, summer camp, or a Bar Mitzvah, is to set aside individual reserves of cash for each goal.  Most people don’t do that. Instead, they just throw it on a credit card and worry about it later. A good plan is an automatic investment program that transfers money out of your bank account on a recurring basis. Businessweek asked financial planners and advisers for additional strategies and tips on planning and saving for some of the biggest costs of child rearing.

College: Since this is your biggest potential expenditure, start saving as soon as possible, ideally within the first year of your child’s birth. Your best bet is probably a what’s known as a 529 college savings plan because the money accrues tax-deferred—and some states let you put away as much as $300,000. Here’s a good calculator to give you an idea why you should start saving now.

Housing: Aside from college, one of the biggest costs associated with raising children is providing shelter, which amounts to more than $100,000 per child over an 18-year span. The bulk of those costs go toward a mortgage, property taxes, maintenance, repairs, utilities, and furnishings. You can save money by handling some home maintenance yourself—but only tasks you’re capable of doing well.

Food: It certainly helps to shop in bulk at stores like Costco and Sam’s Club, but make sure you bring a list and stick to it. Another smart way to keep food costs in line is to learn to cook.

Activities: Extracurricular activities can get very expensive, with an average cost of $35,000 over an 18-year period. While your son or daughter might play ice hockey for just five months out of the year, your best bet is to set money aside year-round to finance things like the cost of team membership, additional ice time, travel, and equipment. Though parents may want to expose kids to many different experiences, one way to limit expenses is to focus your children on a few activities they are passionate about.

Child and Health Care: Costs for child care and health care are significant, though they vary wildly around the country. Find out whether your employer offers a child-care or health-care flexible spending account. If you are in the 28% federal tax bracket and live in a state with a 5% tax rate, a $5,000 annual contribution saves you $1,650 in taxes.

California among worst in providing health insurance through jobs

The percentage of Californians who get health insurance through their jobs is among the lowest in the country. Nationwide, about 63% of Americans have health policies offered by their employers. But in California, only 55.7% of workers were covered through their jobs last year, making it the state with the fifth-lowest level of employer-sponsored coverage according to the study by the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.  The number of employers offering health insurance has fallen nationally in recent years due to rising premiums and the diminishing bargaining power of the average worker. Companies have responded to the pressure by requiring employees to pick up a larger portion of the tab, through higher co-payments and monthly contributions, and reducing benefits and coverage for spouses and children.

While low-wage workers had the lowest level of coverage, middle-wage employees in California saw the steepest decline in those offered insurance during the past five years. And more than 600,000 fewer children in California were covered by their parents’ insurance last year than in 2000.

In California, the problem is worse due to the sheer size of the population and the fact a large number of residents work in jobs that typically do not offer health insurance, such as agriculture, hospitality and the service industry. California, which has more than 6.5 million uninsured residents, is considered a leader among states proposing health reform. Everything that’s going on in the nation is going on in California in a big way - immigration, economic inequities, large employers, small employers. You have highly profitable companies and a lot who are just scrambling to get by,” states Jared Bernstein, senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute.

Customer service, tech support…these days we outsource everything to India.

Surrogate motherhood once was limited in India to helping close relatives who couldn’t complete a pregnancy due to medical difficulties. But now, poor Indian women are renting out their wombs to foreigners. Leading gynecologist Dr. Kamla Selvaraj says it’s now becoming a regular “profession” in India, with more and more women willing to carry babies for others, for a fee. India has for years been providing foreigners with in-vitro fertilization (IVF) treatment at a cheaper rate than the equivalent services in Western countries. While a couple in the U.S. will generally pay tens of thousands of dollars to a surrogate mother and affiliated agencies, in India the cost could be around $5,000, plus medical and attendant costs. If you haven’t seen the episode on Oprah, here you go.

Cashing in on Medical Tourism

Medical tourism is a $40 billion business globally, and the people packing their bags most frequently are Americans. Numerous nations–notably India, Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia–are making a lot of money off the American healthcare system’s problems, but it isn’t all bad news for the U.S. Medical tourism companies are cropping up across the country–approximately 50 so far–and there’s no end in sight. It’s not just a case of Americans traveling abroad for surgery. Europeans and Arabs are going to other countries as well.

How do the doctors feel about this? Some physicians will say that it’s a great way to offload treatments that don’t pay well, anyway, because the insurance companies will only pay $19,000 for that $100,000 operation, and $19,000, by the time they take care of overhead, isn’t that much.

Americans could contact an accredited hospital in Malaysia directly to find out if one of its surgeons can do a kidney transplant, but because it’s complicated to determine which hospital is right for each person and operation the medical tourism agencies have caught on. A few American health insurance agencies already have pilot programs looking into the feasibility of paying lower costs for people to travel abroad and have expensive surgery, which means that businesses may soon be offering medical tourism packages to their employees. Even more telling, some American hospitals now have branch hospitals overseas to capitalize on medical tourism. Yes! Who can beat having plastic surgery for $5,000 versus $16,000 to $20,000 in the U.S.

 Convenient Yet Pricy

A new kind of medical practice is flourishing nationwide that offers to go to where the patients are — whether a home, an office or a hotel — to treat ailments as diverse as a sprained ankle or a bad case of bronchitis. Some services may even wheel in a mobile X-ray machine or an ultrasound machine, depending on the ailment, or perhaps pull out kits to test for strep throat or to draw blood. They may dole out medication on the spot or arrange for pharmacies to deliver prescriptions. The convenience comes at a price. Appointment fees can range from $250 to $450, with additional tests and medication extra. And payment is due at the time of the appointment.

Doctor delivery is one of many new approaches springing up to address the demand for faster, more convenient medical care. Walk-in clinics are opening in places like pharmacies, retail stores and airport terminals, though not everyone thinks this is a good idea. The desire of consumers for better access to a doctor has also given rise to “concierge medicine,” in which they pay thousands of dollars annually to get convenient, no-wait appointments. There is a separate fee for an actual appointment.

The demand for primary care physicians outweighs the supply in many cities, so patients can wait weeks, and even months, for appointments, and hospital emergency rooms are becoming overloaded with nonemergency cases.

  “Most dentists consider themselves to be in the business of dentistry rather than the practice of dentistry”

For American dentists, times have never been better. With dentists’ fees rising far faster than inflation and more than 100 million people lacking dental insurance, the percentage of Americans with untreated cavities began rising this decade, reversing a half-century trend of improvement in dental health. Previously unreleased figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that in 2003 and 2004, the most recent years with data available, 27 percent of children and 29 percent of adults had cavities going untreated.

Many poor and lower-middle-class families do not receive adequate care, in part because most dentists want customers who can pay cash or have private insurance, and they do not accept Medicaid patients. As a result, publicly supported dental clinics have months-long waiting lists even for people who need major surgery for decayed teeth.

Business is booming for most dentists. They are making more money while working shorter hours, on average, even as the nation’s number of dentists, per person, has declined. Partly as a result, dental fees have risen much faster than inflation. In real dollars, the cost of the average dental procedure rose 25% from 1996 to 2004. Dentists’ incomes have grown faster than that of the typical American and the incomes of medical doctors. American dentists in general practice made an average salary of $185,000 in 2004, but today dental surgeons and orthodontists average more than $300,000 annually.

Critics say the association’s plans would do little to solve the basic problem of access to care. Moreover, even in states that have raised Medicaid payments, most dentists still do not accept Medicaid patients. Some dentists do not accept Medicaid patients because they frequently miss appointments, which means lost revenue.

Here’s a list of calculators ranging from Mortgage APR to Auto Rebate vs. Low Interest Financing to Hourly Paycheck.