The U.S. Department of Labor identified GIS as "one of the three most important emerging and evolving fields, along with nanotechnology and biotechnology.

GIS Careers

Click here to see average GIS salaries - The salaries appearing are for a "GIS Specialist" position, you can enter GIS Analayst, GIS Technician, GIS Manager, etc to see the average salary for those positions

Job opportunities are growing and diversifying as geospatial technologies prove their value in ever more areas."

The worldwide geospatial market grew to $30 billion in 2005

The U.S. military has spent more than $1 billion on commercial remote sensing and GIS in the past two years.

U.S. - 900,000 additional jobs in geospatial technology expected from 2002 to 2012

NASA will have to replace 26% of it’s geospatial workforce within the next decade

Check out these links to read more about the vast need for skilled GIS personnel:

U.S. Department of Labor Employment & Training Administration
http://www.doleta.gov/BRG/Indprof/geospatial_profile.cfm
http://www.doleta.gov/BRG/Indprof/Geospatial.cfm

Resources to developing your professional career in the field of Geographic Information Systems
http://www.gis.com/careers/career_pathways.html
http://gislounge.com/gis-career-resources/

Current available GIS positions

The following are just a few sites that either list available GIS positions or contain links to GIS job postings. There are many, many more listings, this is just to give you an idea for the volume of  needed GIS personnel and the marketability of these skills.

Listing of available GIS positions

My GIS Jobs is a geospatial career website that attempts to aggregate every single GIS job listing from across the web into a single place. In addition, GIS employers can post their positions directly to the site. This includes jobs in GIS, remote sensing, and related geospatial fields. http://www.mygisjobs.com

http://jobs.gislounge.com
http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=GIS&l=&sort
http://www.geojobs.org/jobs.php
http://giscareers.com/jobSummary.php
http://www.spatialhydrology.com/joblinks.html

http://www.gis.com/careers/listings.html

http://www.getgisjobs.com/critical-need-gis-jobs.php

Site contains multiple links for GIS jobs in the western U.S  http://www.cccarto.com/gisjobs/gisjobs.html

GIS in Higher Education

Click here to see a listing of GIS programs at various universities including FAU

Check out this website listing of Universities offering GIS

GIS has gained widespread attention at institutes of higher education

Typically geographers recognize the power of GIS to help understand the wide array of patterns and events that occur on our planet, now industries recognize and are using this tool for business.

Currently there are as many as one million professionals utilizing GIS as part of their job worldwide. This number is expected to increase by approximately 15% per year, prompting the necessity for universities and colleges to educate our next generation to fill the impending void in the job market for qualified GIS workers. Due to the need for skilled staff, driven by business and world economies, GIS has been incorporated into more than 100 different academic disciplines at universities worldwide.

"Because approximately 80 percent of data contains a spatial component, researchers in agriculture, architecture, business, natural resource management, natural sciences, public health and medicine, education, engineering, law, library science, military science, physical sciences, and social sciences benefit from using GIS. Nearly 800 universities are doing research using GIS." (ESRI ArcUser, Learning with GIS)