Employment & Professional Networking Future OT saturation

[TheCBkid]

Hi all,
So I have been doing my fair share of investigating careers for my future, with OT being in my top 2 for sure.
I noticed a few things about some jobs, which is they were considered the ultimate job at one point. Kind of the way you see medical field jobs. Then, over time, people looking for jobs that pay well and are guaranteed to have openings go to school for these jobs. Eventually, there comes a time where the number of professionals largely outnumbers the positions available (lawyers, for example).

Any thoughts of how the future of the OT profession looks?

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[mgeagle]

Hi all,
So I have been doing my fair share of investigating careers for my future, with OT being in my top 2 for sure.
I noticed a few things about some jobs, which is they were considered the ultimate job at one point. Kind of the way you see medical field jobs. Then, over time, people looking for jobs that pay well and are guaranteed to have openings go to school for these jobs. Eventually, there comes a time where the number of professionals largely outnumbers the positions available (lawyers, for example).

Any thoughts of how the future of the OT profession looks?

After doing some research on the matter the future of OT as a whole looks good just as do several medical field jobs. Now of course certain areas of the country and certain positions within the field will have considerably more competition than other areas and positions. However, strictly speaking in terms of being able to get a decent job somewhere and having considerable options should not be an issue for an OT for years and years to come. Our nation as a whole has a shortage of OTs and that is not something that will be remedied over night. It will take a considerable amount of time for the shortage to not be so bad. One of the biggest safeguards that this profession has that will keep jobs plentiful for OTs for many years to come is how competitive it is to get into an OT school. Some schools with over 600 applicants only accept about 20-40 people. This sucks for applicants but is great for those who get accepted and will be future OTs in a few years because that means considerably less competition for jobs as a whole meaning less saturation. Remember, as stated before, that doesn't mean an OT will get any position in any spot of the country with ease, (for example the Austin, Texas area which from what I have heard, is extremely saturated with OTs and jobs are super-competitive) but it does mean that for the most part you can find work within the field and will have a few options as to where you may want to work.

 

[CurlyHairedGirl]

One reason law school got saturated is that many people picked the profession simply on the potential for high pay, and a little bit based on prestige, rather than on whether the field appealed to them. And they looked at the high salaries available... to people who worked 80 hours a week. I know a fair number of lawyers and people who have law degrees but are no longer practicing. One area that does still have a lot of demand is patent law - which requires both a law degree and the harder engineering background that I mention in the next paragraph.

Law school also is weighted towards people who have good time management skills and study a lot, as opposed to people who are smart and can understand difficult ideas such as biology/sciences, math, and computer/engineering. Ability to understand difficult ideas makes it harder to get into health care. I found that skill in computers/engineering/math is also partially dependent on enthusiasm/interest and preparation prior to college. Although my undergrad in is in applied math, I found that I hit a wall in the hard sciences where I could no longer do well because I kept making careless mistakes in the underlying math. When you have a homework set where one problem takes two pages of paper, and you mess something up along the way, your answer doesn't cancel out nicely.

I went to an engineering undergrad school years ago, and most of my classmates have gone beyond their technical skills and are in some sort of management position, teaching college, or have gone to another field (like patent law) that leverages their science/engineering background in another area. I decided that I wouldn't like a management career, so at the age of 25, decided that I would probably seek another "more idealistic" career around age 40. So the current plan is that I start OT grad school at the age of 40 and one month.

 

[ExceptionalSea]

Law school also is weighted towards people who have good time management skills and study a lot, as opposed to people who are smart and can understand difficult ideas such as biology/sciences, math, and computer/engineering. Ability to understand difficult ideas makes it harder to get into health care.

i'm confused, wouldn't the ability to understand difficult ideas (i.e. having a higher general intelligence) make it easier to get into health care? just curious by what you mean. also, i know plenty of very brilliant people who go into law...

 

[msot4me]

Eventually yes, it will be difficult to land a job due to saturation. However, there aren't many OT schools around and schools accept a limited number of applicants each year. It's not like nursing where you have literally over a dozen programs in many states. So far the job market for OTs looks good so try not to worry about it now.