Find Your Career

More and more great-paying jobs are coming to Alabama, which means more residents are needed to fill them! Our colleges train you for some of the highest earning careers in the state that do not require more than a certification or two-year degree. Here’s a look at the top middle-skill jobs (jobs that don’t require a bachelor’s degree) in the state.

Alabama’s Top Middle-Skill Jobs

This is a list of the top 15 jobs with the highest increase in demand over the last five years in key industries that do not require a four-year degree.

  1. Personal Care Aides
    Personal care aides administer bedside or personal care, such as personal hygiene assistance, as well as prepare and maintain records of a client’s progress and services performed.
  2. Registered Nurses
    Registered Nurses provide and manage care for patients by creating care plans based on the patients’ needs. RNs supervise other nursing staff and assistants.
  3. Assemblers and Fabricators, All Other, Including Team Assemblers
    Assemblers and fabricators assemble finished products and the parts that go into them. They use tools, machines, and their hands to make engines, computers, aircraft, ships, boats, toys, electronic devices, control panels, and more.
  4. Heavy and Tractor-Trailer Truck Drivers
    Tractor-trailer truck drivers transport goods from one location to another. Drivers operate over local, state, and interstate highways making deliveries that may span several states. Most long-haul drivers operate trucks with a gross vehicle weight (GVW) capacity of more than 26,000 pounds.
  5. Production Workers, Helpers, All Other
    Production workers and helpers have jobs that include loading and unloading items from machines, conveyors, and conveyances, operating production machinery or assisting machine operators, and prepping manufactured material for further processing, inspecting, or wrapping.
  6. Inspectors, Testers, Sorters, Samplers, and Weighers
    These jobs include inspecting, testing, sorting, sampling, or weighing raw materials or processed materials, assembled, fabricated or machined parts or products for quality control standards. Precision measuring and complex testing equipment may be used to find defects, wear, or deviations from specifications.
  7. Industrial Machinery Mechanics
    Industrial Machinery Mechanics positions maintain and repair manufacturing and processing equipment and other industrial machinery, such as conveying systems, production machinery, and packaging equipment. Installation, dismantling, repairing, reassembling, and moving machinery in factories and construction sites may also be part of these jobs.
  8. First-Line Supervisors of Production and Operating Workers
    These workers give direct supervision of the production, operations, and safety of workers, such as inspectors, precision workers, machine setters and operators, assemblers, fabricators, and plant and system operators.
  9. Molding, Coremaking, and Casting Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Metal, and Plastic
    Workers in this field set up and operate metal, or plastic casting, or core-making machines to mold or cast metal or thermoplastic parts or products. Jobs involve measuring and visually inspecting products, overseeing continuous operation of automatic machines, set up of molding, casting, and core-making machines, reading specifications, blueprints, and work orders to determine setups, temperatures, and time settings.
  10. Welders, Cutters, Solderers, and Brazers
    Welders, cutters, solderers, and brazers use hand-held or remotely controlled equipment to join or cut metal parts, filling holes, indentations, and seams in metal parts or products. The work may be on scaffolding, high off the ground, in confined areas, and they occasionally must lift heavy objects.
  11. First-Line Supervisors of Construction Trades and Extraction Workers
    These workers directly supervise and coordinate activities of construction or extraction workers. The job would include supervising, coordinating, or scheduling of job activities and safety rules and regulations, reading blueprints, determining construction requirements.
  12. Medical Assistants
    Medical assistants are often the first face residents see when completing the basic patient history and personal information forms at a medical office. Medical assistants may also help measure a patient’s vital signs, such as blood pressure, and help physicians with patient examinations.
  13. Heating, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration Mechanics and Installers
    Heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration (HVACR) technicians work and install heating, ventilation, cooling, and refrigeration systems that control the temperature and air quality in buildings.
  14. Pharmacy Technicians
    Pharmacy technicians receive written prescriptions or refill requests, as well as verify that patient information is correct. They also pre-pack bulk medicines, fill bottles with prescribed medications, and maintain proper storage while assisting customers.
  15. Sawing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders, Wood
    These workers set up, operate, or tend wood sawing machines, including lead sawyers, and operating CNC equipment. These jobs involve inspecting and measuring using rulers, squares, or caliper rules, adjusting saw blades by hand or by panel controls, mount sawing blades and placing attachments to machine shafts.

Don’t see something that fits your plans? Let our digital Career Coach help you out. You’ll find different job titles, how much you can make, and the colleges that offer the training you need. You can also build a resume and take a career assessment to see if some of your hobbies might actually fit into a career!

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