WASHINGTON — A good job is still hard to find, though recent labor-market data indicate the employment situation is slowly improving.

While the economy is adding jobs at lower levels than workers would like, analysts expect some growth in a wide range of service jobs this year – including retail, information technology, professional, scientific and technical jobs – and continuing growth in health care.

“Primary job generation will be across a wide range of private service areas,” said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight, an economic consulting firm in Lexington, Mass.

With the aging population, health care remains a primary field for job growth, experts say. “Health care is always adding jobs. That will clearly continue,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington think tank.

Among the positions expected to have greater demand in coming years: nurses, medical scientists, physician assistants, skin-care specialists and dental hygienists.

Information-technology also will add jobs, because companies that have been sitting on cash will upgrade their technology to gain a competitive edge as the economy emerges from the recession.

 

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