The approach of a new school year conjures images of teachers preparing their classrooms and principals greeting students as they walk through the doors on the first day of classes.
But federal data shows that the education jobs that will see the most growth over a decade are supporting roles like substitute teachers, therapists and technologists.
The findings are bracketed by changes in student enrollment and the ending of federal school emergency funds, which are reshaping school districts’ staffing outlooks. School districts across the country continue to grapple with millions in budget deficits, leading to hundreds of job cuts in some cases.
Recent reports show that schools are likely to struggle to fill the most in-demand roles.
Highest-Growth Areas
Looking at 10 education roles that will gain the most net jobs by 2034, short-term substitute teachers top the overall rankings with an increase of more than 10,000.
Malia Hite says that Utah is among the states that will see an increase in jobs for teacher assistants and paraeducators, who will specifically support student behavior and early literacy, thanks to an infusion of state and federal funds. Hite serves as the Utah State Board of Education’s executive coordinator of education licensing.
She adds the caveat that it’s tough to attract candidates to those roles, particularly in early childhood education — a problem felt strongly around the country.
“However, I will say that those positions, because those positions are typically an entry-level position with a low wage or part-time, they’re hard positions to fill,” Hite says. “Even in the current job market, [where] it’s hard to find positions, we’re still seeing openings in our paraeducator job market statewide. Some of them are making $9 an hour, so why would I do that when I can go somewhere else and make $15 in an entry-level position?”
Hite is cautious when talking about education growth overall because it’s not equal among sectors. Increased demand is expected for non-teacher and non-administrator staff like speech language pathologists, social workers and occupational therapists, she says.
“This is now our second year that we’ve seen a decrease of student enrollment, and so that means we need fewer teachers, there’s less funding, and so we’re seeing a lot of things like schools close,” she explains. “So in that way, there’s no way that education jobs are going to grow.”
A report from the Consortium for School Networking, a professional organization for K-12 tech leaders, found that schools struggle to retain IT staff across all specialities and levels. Among school leaders that it polled, 16 percent said they were in danger of losing IT staff due to the winding down of federal relief money that was allocated to schools during the pandemic.
Health Workers In Demand
The rest of the list, however, is filled by health therapy roles and technology roles. A recent analysis by staffing company ProTherapy predicts physical therapist assistants, speech-language pathologists and physical therapists will be the most in-demand education jobs of 2026 and continue to see double-digit percentage growth.
Schools employ physical therapists and assistants to ensure that students with disabilities can participate in school activities to the fullest extent, while speech language pathologists help students with communication disorders.
Dakota Long, who headed ProTherapy’s 2026 School Workforce Demand Index, says these jobs are growing in demand because schools are aiming to identify students with disabilities and set up interventions as early as possible, as early as age 3 in some schools.
But another factor in the demand for these specialists – physical therapist assistants, in particular – is the job market they are graduating into.
While teacher graduates are overwhelmingly likely to work in the classroom, newly minted health care workers can be wooed by jobs in hospitals, clinics and home health agencies in addition to schools.
“From my perspective in working with schools, they’re wanting to identify those things early on,” Long says, “that way they can provide the best services for these kiddos before it gets to age 7, 8, and then they realize, ‘Oh gosh, we could have been supplying these services earlier.’ So you have early intervention, more kiddos needing these services, but then employees that could be taking on these roles have a lot of different options, as well.”
Hite says that while non-teacher jobs are expected to increase in Utah, though realistically not by as much as ProTherapy’s projections, some nuance is required when looking at what the growth rates mean.
“If I look at the subsector of audiologist, we had two [full-time employees] six years ago, and now we have 11,” she says, an increase of more than five-fold. “We’re talking about 10 people.”
