One of St. Louis’ biggest industries continues to see high demand for “opportunity occupations,” or jobs that require little to no higher education but pays above the regional median wage, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis researcher Nicole Summers-Gabr says. Big gaps in the healthcare industry for entry level, specialized jobs means there are a large number of opportunities, nationally, for employment in sectors that could stand to lift some people out of poverty.
“These are jobs that often come with separate benefits, such as retirement and health insurance,” she said. “For young adults that are interested in continuing careers that might give them a stable livelihood but don’t require a lot of investment in terms of schooling—or for people who are interested in re-skilling—opportunity occupations are a really interesting pathway.”
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Summers-Gabr presented her most recent findings on opportunity occupations, and the implementation of artificial intelligence in hospitals, at the Federal Reserve on Tuesday, joined by SSM Health chief community health officer and former St. Louis COVID czar Alexander Garza, along with other health leaders.
Summers-Gabr has studied six occupations that tend to pay more than the median annual wage ($49,500 for 2024) but don’t require a college degree (although some require at least some training). Those jobs—licensed practical nurse, registered nurse, laboratory technician, pharmacy technician, radiology technician, and respiratory therapist—all saw growing demand, nationally, from 2019–2024, Summers-Gabr’s research showed.
Radiology technicians and licensed practical nurses saw the highest increase—with a 46 percent and 48.2 percent increase, respectively—in the number of hospitals reporting at least one open role in those jobs, her presentation said. St. Louis, specifically, could benefit from the higher need for these jobs. A total of 13.9 percent of all employment in the St. Louis area came from healthcare or education, Summers-Gabr has found, while the St. Louis Business Journal’s list of the top 10 local employers showed five that provided health services, or did adjacent work (like Washington University).
But, Summers-Gabr noted, the gaps in those jobs come from an aging population and a dangerous climate that repels some people from those fields. She notes that frontline healthcare workers are more likely to be assaulted than people in law enforcement.
Her presentation also noted that, while demand for those particular opportunity occupations grew from 2019 to 2023, with more than 80 percent of studied hospitals reporting at least one opening in those roles, only around 50 percent showed such an opening in 2024.
Summers-Gabr has also focused on artificial intelligence adoption in the healthcare sector. Some of her research from earlier this year found that, while AI adoption in healthcare has increased, layoffs have not scaled proportionally. On Tuesday, she said it was too soon to tell whether AI would be a net positive or negative for the industry as a whole; while it’s often seen as a technology that replaces workers, she’s found that, in healthcare at least, AI is being deployed less as a replacement for human labor and more as a tool of “assistance.”
One panelist Tuesday, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Institute for Community Health Innovation HR business partner Jess Walker, mentioned a program, Upskill NWA, that had seen success in her state both training people for entry-level positions in healthcare and pivoting to meet gaps in the needs of her specific healthcare environment.
Her university’s partnership with Upskill has allowed people to change careers: for example, a housekeeper already in their system could train to have a more health-focused role. That program has helped them two-fold, both by meeting major staffing demands from the administrative side and keeping employees who may want to change occupations.
Summers-Gabr told SLM that she wasn’t aware of a similar program in St. Louis, which could help move people up the career ladder within one organization.
Walker said the success of the Upskill program in Arkansas raises questions for other healthcare organizations. Namely, “Can we give them opportunities for career advancement via partnerships with community colleges or other nonprofit organizations, so that we can provide stepping stones into a healthcare career that will allow them to have upward mobility and have more financial stability for them and their families?”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story referred inaccurately to Nicole Summers-Gbr’s occupation. She is not an economist. We regret the error.
