Best & Worst Job Prospects in the Urban Fantasy Economy for 2011

So, you didn’t get that hero(ine) job you wanted. Now what? Here are the 13 jobs with the best employment prospects in the paranormal and urban fantasy world for 2011. Although you won’t necessarily achieve the fame and ridicule enjoyed by so many urban fantasy hero(ine)s, you can certainly find yourself gainfully and lucratively employed… especially if you have a strong stomach. (And HELLO—you weren’t expecting to be a paranormal hero(ine) without a strong stomach, we hope…)

BEST PROSPECTS
We recommend pursuing a career in the following fields:

1. Blood removal (clothing, furniture, carpets, walls, etc)
Wholesale slaughter in the paranormal world is at an all-time high—excellent news for detail-oriented individuals with an interest in blood removal; opportunities here will be especially strong in 2011, and likely beyond.

2. ER personnel
See #1. Where there’s blood, there are traumatic and life threatening injuries that need to be treated—stat! Prospects are excellent for the following specialties: limb and head reattachment, heart repair and reinsertion, full-body skin reattachment and regeneration, and the emerging specialty of vampire ash cloning.

3. Post-traumatic stress disorder therapist
There are two exciting directions to go in this burgeoning field: the treatment of traumatized and sometimes body-part-spattered witnesses, and hero/heroine therapy—which may include exorcism.

4. Leather clothing manufacture and repair
Everybody who’s anybody wears black leather clothing in the paranormal world—nothing else provides that perfectly badass look. Unfortunately, even this sturdy material cannot stand up to fireballs, edged weapons, or fangs, so there’s non-stop demand for both new leather clothing and the repair of old.

5. Hazardous materials removal
Where do you think the venom, vampire blood, and stray evil (and possibly regeneration-capable) body parts go after the fighting is done? Does it all get left to fester in the street, compromise the city water supply, or crawl away on its own? No! Specialized workers must pull on hazmat suits and level-four respirators and schlep out to the scene with suction and containment devices. “Skills-challenged” job hunters are encouraged to get in on this exciting profession!

6. Firefighter
The viability of this profession should be self-evident: vampire conflagration, magefire, explosions, and the like lead to non-stop demands for brave and/or foolhardy firefighters.

7. Tattoo artists
In the paranormal world these days, it’s no longer enough to have a mere tattoo or tramp stamp. Hello! Plain old tattoos are so 2009. Hero(ine)s now require elaborate body art of all kinds, including animate, arousal sensing, kill-tallying, and celebratory tattoos.

8. Tattoo removal specialist
See #7.

9. Weapons manufacture and sharpening, gun repair, munitions, etc.
How the heck do you think all that blood gets spilled in the first place?! Hero(ine)s require talented professionals to keep them well supplied with offensive, defensive, stupidly destructive, and/or just damn cool weapons.

10. Building trades: Home repairs and remodeling, urban infrastructure rebuilding, etc.
Wow! Have Paranormals been going crazy on each other or what? The first half of 2010 saw an unprecedented increase in battles of all kinds, from barroom brawls to city-leveling show-downs. Hey, somebody has to repair all that decimation! It could be you! We predict nonstop job growth in this area.

11. Blood bank staff and blood donors
Blood banks in today’s paranormal world cannot possibly meet current demands, a dangerous situation considering the alternative: unregulated freelance blood harvesting. We foresee numerous lucrative opportunities for donors and round-the-clock staff.

12. Morgue personnel and undertakers
You don’t think those bodies on the street get up and walk away on their own, do you? (Well, not all of them do.) While these professions do require special undead detection skills (and that’s not a mistake you’ll make more than once), surviving personnel can enjoy job security and variety.

13. Bartender
See #’s 1-12

WORST PROSPECTS
We do not recommend the following fields for 2011:

1. Physicist
This profession has abnormally high levels of insanity in the urban fantasy world.

2. Animal control
Unhappy family members make this a bitch of a job.

3. Gun control advocate
So lonely…

4. Ballerina
Avoid this profession at all costs.

Good luck, and happy job hunting, people!

Images from Wikimedia Commons: “A Car on Fire in Pasadena” by Aaron Logan and “How to pour 5 martinis at the same time while on fire: Important skills of our time” by Tom Purves 

Carolyn Crane lives in Minneapolis, and is the author of the Justine Jones: Disillusionist trilogy (Spectra) including Mind Games, and the upcoming Double Cross (September 28, 2010).

Chris Castle is a longtime SFF reader who blogs at Stumbling Over Chaos about stock photo misadventures, m/m romance, and quirky things she finds lying about on the Internet.