The recent economic downturn serves as a reminder that no job is recession-proof.

But as Hawaii’s depressed job market begins to recover, officials have identified a number of occupations that are projected to offer the best hiring potential in the coming years.

Among 10 occupations paying more than $48,000 a year, openings in teaching and nursing are expected to be the most plentiful, with each adding an average of 330 jobs a year through 2018, according to a forecast by the state.

Other top growth areas include general and operations managers (300 openings a year) and carpenters (200 openings a year).

Job openings are expected to be even more numerous in many of the lower-paying occupations, such as cashiers and food service, but hiring in those fields is more often the result of turnover than new job creation, officials say. Those jobs account for 8 of the 10 overall occupations with the largest number of projected openings. Annual wages in that group of occupations range from $18,220 to $32,300, according to the DLIR. Waiters and waitresses topped the list with 980 projected openings a year, followed by retail salespeople with 940 positions and cashiers with 730 openings annually.

Considering Hawaii’s aging population and a greater emphasis being placed on preventative health care, it isn’t surprising that registered nurses and other health professionals are expected to be in demand, according to local health care industry officials.

Nationally, there are projected to be 711,900 openings for registered nurses between 2010 and 2020, the most of any occupation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the two fastest growing occupations through 2020 are expected to be home health and personal care aides, each with projected growth rates about 70 percent during the 10-year span, according to BLS.

Enrollment in Hawaii Pacific University’s nursing program is up, and the school is seeing greater numbers of students who are going back to school after having spent some time in the workforce, said Lise Choucair, director of student retention and progression at HPU’s College of Nursing and Health Sciences. Enrollment at the school has been increasing in recent years, and in December HPU graduated 128 registered nurse candidates, she said.

"We’re seeing a lot of people looking for second careers coming into the program, especially with these hard economic times," Choucair said. "We have a lot of single parents, a lot of mature students. Very few of them are living at home with mom and dad."

Choucair was recruiting potential students at last week’s Leeward Community College’s annual Career, College & Job Fair, where there was high interest in both HPU’s nursing and health sciences programs.

HPU began offering a health science degree a few years ago to keep pace with changes in the U.S. health care industry, said Jessica Spurrier, assistant professor of health sciences. The program allows students to specialize in a variety of health-related fields, including wellness management, health education and community health services, she said. The four-year program prepares students for an exam given by a national organization that accredits health education specialists.

For graduates in the nursing program, a college degree doesn’t translate into an automatic job as a registered nurse at a hospital or clinic in Hawaii. Because many of the job openings are for experienced nurses, new graduates may have to go to the mainland to find entry-level RN positions, or take a position locally at a lower job classification.

Hawaii Pacific Health, which operates four hospitals in the state, hires 40 to 80 registered nurses a year and expects that number to steadily increase over the next six years as demand for services increases and some of its current staff retires, said Carl Hinson, director of workforce development for Hawaii Pacific Health.

To achieve the right mix of experienced and beginning nurses, HPH still has to recruit from the mainland for some specialty areas of nursing, he said. The company also is limited in the number of new graduates it can absorb because each one needs to be mentored, which cuts into the productivity of the more experienced nurses who serve as mentors, according to Hinson.

To accommodate higher numbers of local nursing school graduates, HPH has adjusted its workplace structure to place some of the RN candidates into lower-skilled positions where they can gain experience before working their way up to full-fledged nursing positions, he said.

The median annual pay for registered nurses is $84,060 in Hawaii compared with $65,950 nationally, according to the BLS. Of the 10 high-wage occupations in the survey, pay in Hawaii is higher in four occupations and lower in four. Pay was about the same in two other occupations.

The occupation with the biggest advantage for local workers was in construction labor, where the median salary of $50,220 in Hawaii is 68.9 percent higher than the median nationwide salary of $29,730.

The biggest disadvantage is in elementary school teaching, where Hawaii educators earn a median salary of $48,400, 8.4 percent below the national median of $52,840, according to the BLS.