The best fields for landing a new job in the next 10 years are health care, math and technology, and social services.

Those fields are expected to be the nation’s and the region’s fastest growing this decade, based on analysis of labor statistics.

All jobs expected to take off are service jobs. The only exception is certain construction openings.

Health support jobs lead the way, with a nearly 34.5 percent jump to be seen nationally in jobs such as home health aides, therapy assistants and medical assistants. As of last year, this sector employed 15,850 people in the Dayton metro area, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The economy is still struggling to recover from a recession that left many workers finding their skills do not match the wants of employers. These projections give local residents an idea of the types of jobs that will offer the best prospects going forward.

“It really speaks to the long-term transition that we’ve had in this economy from a manufacturing base to a services base,” said LaVaughn Henry, vice president of the Cincinnati branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. His territory includes Dayton. “That’s where demand is going. That’s what always pulls job growth.”

Work in services or manufacturing today is knowledge intensive, said Mike Goldman, interim director of career services and associate director of career services for employer relations at Miami University.

“Education is essential today. The role of community colleges, the role of technical programs are more important than ever, especially for adult learners,” Goldman said.

More local people by the end of this decade will work in office, sales and food preparation jobs than anything else, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Those are also some of the lowest paying occupations, with median pay in the Dayton area of no more than $33,000 a year.

The U.S. Bureau revises its 10-year forecasts every two years, having released 2020 estimates in March.

The analysis predicts for 24.9 million people to work in office and administrative jobs; 16.8 million to work in sales related jobs; and 12.2 million to work in food preparation throughout the U.S. by then.

Manufacturing jobs will still represent a big share of employment in the Dayton region, but not as much as they used to, said Lewis Horner, chief of work force research of Ohio’s Bureau of Labor Market Information. Statewide, production jobs are expected to decline through 2018, according to the most recent estimates.

“The biggest change that we’re going to see in terms of the job distribution in Ohio is unfortunately a decline in production occupations. There’s a variety of reasons for that. Production occupations are not going to go away, it’s still going to be a very significant part of the Ohio economy, but there will be fewer production occupation jobs and what that means is people are going to have to move out into other occupation jobs,” Horner said.

“If you look at the other areas that are strong growth, the computer and mathematical occupations, the health care technical occupations and support, those are occupations that you can’t, at least at the moment, easily replace a person with a machine,” he added.

More than 100,000 people currently work in manufacturing jobs in the 12-county area, according to the Dayton Region Manufacturers Association.

Thomas Traynor, chair of the economics department at Wright State University, does regional jobs forecasts twice a year.

Growth in health and manufacturing industries has flattened out in recent years in the Dayton area, based on Traynor’s analysis. But flat job growth in manufacturing is better than the declines that shed about 40,000 manufacturing jobs from 2001 to 2009, he said.

Professional and business services added about 5,000 jobs from 2010 to 2012, the most of any other sector, he said. But he doesn’t expect those gains to continue.

“In the next six months, I’m not really seeing a particular industry showing tremendous growth,” he said. “In a way, some of this is due to the sluggish national growth that we’ve been experiencing. Once the national economy picks up, I would expect health care and professional business services to pick up.”