As we sit back and enjoy an extended weekend, barbecues, and better weather for the first time in months, we're also reminded that today isn't just the beginning of a work-shortened week, but a remembrance of those soldiers who've given their all while defending this country.

Without their dedicated service, and the service of existing members of all branches of the military, our freedoms would not have been possible.

So on this Memorial Day I want to take the time to highlight three companies that have gone above and beyond the call of duty to welcome home our military veterans and incorporate their leadership and dedication into their workforce. 

Military veterans offer businesses around the U.S. invaluable experience and an impressive work ethic, so bringing them on board has the potential to improve profitability as well as forge an emotional bond with local communities. It's not only a smart strategic move, but a heartwarming one that demonstrates they care about the communities in which they operate.

In no particular order, I tip my hat to three companies for their dedication in incorporating military veterans and their spouses into the workforce:

Wal-Mart 
As America's largest employer – Wal-Mart employs about 1% of America's workforce – it's not a surprise the discount retail giant is among the top employers of veterans. What is a surprise is the impressive reach of its "Veteran's Welcome Home Commitment."

Expected to result in roughly 100,000 hires over a five-year period, Wal-Mart has pledged a job offer to any honorably discharged veteran within his or her first 12 months off active duty. Begun last Memorial Day, the program resulted in more than 42,000 hires in just the past year.

In addition to making a commitment to hiring military veterans, the Wal-Mart Foundation also doubled down on its pledge to help veterans in their transition from active duty to civilian life. Wal-Mart initially pledged $20 million in 2011, and recently announced its intentions to add another $20 million to support veterans' transitions through 2019.

Wal-Mart frequently gets a bad rap for its lack of unions and low wages, but its workforce diversity is one of the key factors that makes it so relatable to such a large swath of the American public.

Starbucks

Coffee giant Starbucks, which boasts more than 180,000 worldwide employees, should come as no surprise to this list. In November 2013 CEO Howard Schultz announced his company's intention to hire as many as 10,000 military veterans and their spouses over the coming five years in anticipation for what it believes could be a veteran workforce of up to 500,000 in the future.

In Schultz's words:

The value we are creating for shareholders is tied to the values that guide us as an organization. As I look at the opportunity ahead of us, we're going to need to hire men and women with like-minded values and the right job skills in order to continue our current levels of growth. The more than one million transitioning U.S. veterans and almost one and half million military spouses – with their diverse background and experience – share our mission-driven sensibility and work ethic and can build long-term careers at Starbucks as they return home.

On top of pledging to support the transition of previous members of the military, Starbucks is also sharing a portion of each transaction in two U.S. locations (Lakewood, Wash., and San Antonio), known as community stores, with non-profit programs Operations GoodJobs and Vested in Vets. Starbucks anticipates expanding its community store venture to five locations located near U.S. bases in the coming years.

UPS 

Finally, global logistics giant UPS is demonstrating what Brown can do for members of our Armed Forces.

In support of First Lady Michelle Obama's "Joining Forces Initiative" geared toward getting transitioning veterans the proper skills needed to forge an off-duty career, UPS in March 2013 pledged to hire more than 25,000 veterans over the coming five years.

Specifically, UPS said that it will connect with Veterans Service Organizations (VSO) to ensure that it has the skills needed to help veterans in their transition to civilian life. Furthermore, UPS pledged to serve more than 25,000 volunteer hours helping veterans and VSOs.

While it's encouraging to see UPS committed to helping veterans, the true measure of commitment comes in UPS' already impressive hiring totals.

According to UPS, veterans, National Guard, and Reserve members make up 7.5% of its workforce. Running the math, this means somewhere around 16,000 current and former members of the Armed Forces are employed with UPS, and this figure could easily swell to 40,000 over the next five years. With figures like this, is anyone really surprised that UPS customers are the most loyal of any logistics company?

To all our veterans, and to the companies that support and employ them, we offer our appreciation this Memorial Day.

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Business Insider is looking for an awesome new Account Manager to be based out of our New York or Chicago office.

The Account Manager will join a team responsible for executing digital ad campaigns for a growing list of major advertisers and agencies. He or she will be responsible for managing our west coast campaigns from start to finish, and growing those client relationships.

This role is offers a great way to enhance your career at a fast-growing digital publisher. You'll be part of a team that ensures advertising campaigns go live on the site without a hitch, are successfully optimized, and perform to client standards. Also, you'll deliver performance reports to clients and benchmark those results against similar campaigns. You'll work with BI's sales, finance, business development, events, marketing, and ad traffic groups to ensure client goals are met.

We are looking for someone who is passionate about digital advertising, great at client service, an excellent problem solver, and a quick study. This individual should also be able to work independently, as part of the satellite Chicago office, or part of the New York headquarters. 

Responsibilities include:

• Managing the delivery of digital ad campaigns to ensure they fulfill properly
• Recommending optimizations and upsells to clients
• Creating a post-campaign analysis for each campaign
• Interacting with top advertising agencies on major accounts
• Working closely with the sales team to ensure client satisfaction
• Creating weekly reports, case studies, benchmarks, and more

The candidate should be proficient in Excel, PowerPoint, major ad servers (DFP, DFA, Mediamind, Atlas, etc), and web analytics tools.

The ideal candidate is a client service and operations focused individual with experience in digital advertising in a client support or operations role, a BA/BS degree, and 5+ years of experience. Experience at an ad agency is also helpful. The successful candidate is extremely detail-oriented, exceptionally organized, has the ability to multitask and manage multiple accounts, possess strong written and verbal communication skills, solid computer/ technical skills, and thrives in a fast-paced, deadline oriented environment.

 If you're the right candidate for us, please apply here for the New York position: http://jobsco.re/1mNhE5C

And here for the Chicago position: http://jobsco.re/SZith5

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Business Insider is looking for a new Ad Traffic Manager to be located in our San Francisco or New York office.

The Ad Traffic Manager will join an exciting team that is responsible for executing advertising campaigns for a growing list of major advertisers and agencies. In addition, the individual will be responsible for setting up new campaigns, making sure our clients ads run correctly on the site, trouble-shooting ad issues, and working with the entire Sales Operations team to ensure campaigns go off without a hitch.

This role is an incredible way to enhance your career at a fast-growing digital publishing company. You'll interact with Sales, Account Management, Business Development, External Vendors, Programmatic, and Editorial groups. In addition, this individual will be responsible for running campaigns on desktop, mobile, video, email, private marketplace, and other emerging formats.

Duties include:

• Ensuring that all aspects of campaigns get scheduled properly so campaigns go live on time
• Managing the ad QA process, which includes making sure client assets work properly in all browsers and operating systems. 
• Managing the set-up process for new ad campaigns
• Creating a checklist to make sure we have all creative elements in on time for new campaigns, and working with all team members to ensure creative deadlines are being met. 
• Using HTML skills to make sure client tracking elements are implemented properly on our site and through our email newsletter systems. 
• Collaborating with internal teams to test and approve new and innovative ad formats for our site.

The successful candidate should be an operation-focused individual with 2+ years of experience in trafficking or account support. The ideal candidate must have a BA/BS Degree and be extremely detail- oriented, exceptionally organized, has the ability to multitask and manage multiple accounts, possesses strong written and verbal communication skills, solid computer/technical sills, and thrives in a fast-paced, deadline oriented environment. He or she must have a working knowledge of HTML skills, be familiar with Javascript, and have basic knowledge of ad servers such as DFP, Sizemik, or Atlas. 

If this is the job for you, please upload your resume here: http://jobsco.re/1jvoMnC

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It's fairly amazing to write an article called "Why Young People Can't Find Work" that doesn't include the word recession or the phrase going to college, but the Wall Street Journal's opinion section is nothing if not consistently amazing, in its own way.

So no surprise that in an op-ed in this morning's paper, Andrew Puzder, a restaurant executive, uses the question as a shoehorn to slip smoothly into a familiar criticism of Obamacare, which he blames for everything from depressing employment to destroying entry-level jobs.

Rather than pick on Puzder, I'd rather pick on his shoehorn: Why can't young people find work, really? There are three reasons.

The first reason that young people can't find work is that they're not looking for work, because they're in school.

Puzder notes that the BLS just recorded the lowest percentage of 16- to 19-year-olds working or looking for work since it started counting such things in 1948. But look what else changed since the 1940s: The share of the population with less than a high school education fell from 76 percent to 12 percent, while the share of Americans with a bachelor's degree septupled to 32 percent.

The BLS itself says that "the major factor producing this significant [change in labor participation] has been an increase in school attendance at all levels."

The second reason that young people can't find work is that they're young. Young workers today are under-employed at high levels, but they've been under-employed at high levels for decades. Because they're young. Young people have long suffered higher unemployment than the rest of the country, unless they have a college degree. Because they're young.

Graduates are moving from unemployment (school) to employment (workforce). Finding a job is always harder than keeping a job.

The third reason that young people can't find work is that they're having the same trouble that other job-seekers are having following the deep recession and slow recovery.

One way to measure whether the youth job market is particularly sick is to investigate whether the youth unemployment rate is rising faster than the rate for overall workers. Here's the youth unemployment multiple going back to 1985...

The first thing you might see is that the overall youth unemployment rate (in light blue) hasn't budged from its historical average. There is nothing uniquely wrong with the youth job market. Youth unemployment is exactly as high as you might expect.

The second thing you'll see is that there is something uniquely wrong with the job market for young grads who never went to college. Their unemployment rate is clearly elevated—a sign that a college degree is a necessary rung on the ladder to the quality career.

Young people—including college grads—take time to establish themselves in the economy, and they always have. The most important concern today shouldn’t be whether they find work, but what kind of work they find. "It has become more common for underemployed college graduates to find themselves in low-wage jobs” since the 2001 recession, according to a recent New York Fed report.

The problem isn't that Obama killed entry level jobs, as Puzder argues. It's that he lacks the power to enrich those entry level jobs.

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Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, 43, may have been the only woman in media to make Time magazine's list of the 100 Most Influential People In The World and she may be dominating the ratings, but it wasn't an easy road getting there.

Kelly worked as a lawyer for 10 years before even making the huge career change to TV. Kelly practiced law as a corporate litigator at Jones Day for nine years and was an associate in the Chicago office of the law firm Bickel & Brewer LLP.

"I started off as a lawyer for almost a decade before I decided I was completely burned out," Kelly told Business Insider at Time magazine's gala, where she was honored. "When choosing a new profession, I just said to myself: 'What can I do that would utilize some of these skills, but that I would enjoy a little more and will also be fun and still intellectually stimulating?' And this was an obvious choice."

"So I just called up [Fox News chairmain] Roger Ailes, asked for a job on the air, and he said 'Here ya go,'" Kelly joked.

In reality, Kelly had to start from square one.

"I cold-called a bunch of people and then Bill Lord of WJLA, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C., was the poor sucker who put me on the air when I stunk up the joint, but he gave me my first break," Kelly explains. "I stunk at first, but got better and better, thanks to him. And also thanks to Roger Ailes, who ultimately put me on the air every day, multiple times a day for a couple of years, until I got better."

Brit Hume, longtime ABC News correspondent and retired chief White House correspondent, was Kelly's first mentor and the man responsible for getting her audition tape to Ailes in the first place.

Hume recalled to Time:

"Ten years ago, my wife Kim, then Fox News’ Washington bureau chief, walked into my office carrying a videocassette. 'You have got to see this,' Kim said. It was the audition tape of a local TV reporter then named Megyn Kendall. She was a lawyer and new to the business, but her tape displayed as full a set of the qualities of a network correspondent as I had ever seen: great looks, strong voice, authoritative yet cheerful presence and obvious intelligence. In other words, limitless potential. 

But there was a problem: we had no openings, which was quickly pointed out to me when I enthused about her during a phone call with Fox News chair Roger Ailes and other executives. 'Please,' I asked Roger, 'just look at the tape.' I suspected he would see what I had seen. He did, and an opening was created. From the start, Megyn gave us insightful Supreme Court coverage, and she was among the first to spot flaws in the false rape charges against the Duke lacrosse players. She was too good to last as a mere correspondent, and she didn’t. The rest, as they say, is history."

In addition to Brit and Kim Hume, Kelly credits Ailes for helping her become the powerhouse she is today.

"My boss, Roger Ailes, has been a huge inspiration," Kelly told Business Insider. "People who don't like Fox always wonder whether there's been some editorial imprint by Roger, but I can tell you in the 10 years I've been there, that has never been the case. However, he has many times given me advice on how to connect with an audience, how to be my real self, how to tear down the wall between myself and the viewer, and that's helped me."

Kelly added: "Television is just like typing — there's no way to get better without doing it a lot, over and over."

SEE ALSO: How Fox News Anchor Megyn Kelly Balances A Nightly Show And Raising 3 Kids Under Age 5

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Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, 43, may have been the only woman in media to make Time magazine's list of the 100 Most Influential People In The World and she may be dominating the ratings, but it wasn't an easy road getting there.

Kelly worked as a lawyer for 10 years before even making the huge career change to TV. Kelly practiced law as a corporate litigator at Jones Day for nine years and was an associate in the Chicago office of the law firm Bickel & Brewer LLP.

"I started off as a lawyer for almost a decade before I decided I was completely burned out," Kelly told Business Insider at Time magazine's gala, where she was honored. "When choosing a new profession, I just said to myself: 'What can I do that would utilize some of these skills, but that I would enjoy a little more and will also be fun and still intellectually stimulating?' And this was an obvious choice."

"So I just called up [Fox News chairmain] Roger Ailes, asked for a job on the air, and he said 'Here ya go,'" Kelly joked.

In reality, Kelly had to start from square one.

"I cold-called a bunch of people and then Bill Lord of WJLA, the ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C., was the poor sucker who put me on the air when I stunk up the joint, but he gave me my first break," Kelly explains. "I stunk at first, but got better and better, thanks to him. And also thanks to Roger Ailes, who ultimately put me on the air every day, multiple times a day for a couple of years, until I got better."

Brit Hume, longtime ABC News correspondent and retired chief White House correspondent, was Kelly's first mentor and the man responsible for getting her audition tape to Ailes in the first place.

Hume recalled to Time:

"Ten years ago, my wife Kim, then Fox News’ Washington bureau chief, walked into my office carrying a videocassette. 'You have got to see this,' Kim said. It was the audition tape of a local TV reporter then named Megyn Kendall. She was a lawyer and new to the business, but her tape displayed as full a set of the qualities of a network correspondent as I had ever seen: great looks, strong voice, authoritative yet cheerful presence and obvious intelligence. In other words, limitless potential. 

But there was a problem: we had no openings, which was quickly pointed out to me when I enthused about her during a phone call with Fox News chair Roger Ailes and other executives. 'Please,' I asked Roger, 'just look at the tape.' I suspected he would see what I had seen. He did, and an opening was created. From the start, Megyn gave us insightful Supreme Court coverage, and she was among the first to spot flaws in the false rape charges against the Duke lacrosse players. She was too good to last as a mere correspondent, and she didn’t. The rest, as they say, is history."

In addition to Brit and Kim Hume, Kelly credits Ailes for helping her become the powerhouse she is today.

"My boss, Roger Ailes, has been a huge inspiration," Kelly told Business Insider. "People who don't like Fox always wonder whether there's been some editorial imprint by Roger, but I can tell you in the 10 years I've been there, that has never been the case. However, he has many times given me advice on how to connect with an audience, how to be my real self, how to tear down the wall between myself and the viewer, and that's helped me."

Kelly added: "Television is just like typing — there's no way to get better without doing it a lot, over and over."

SEE ALSO: How Fox News Anchor Megyn Kelly Balances A Nightly Show And Raising 3 Kids Under Age 5

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You may have heard this line before: "It's not you, it's me." OK, maybe it's more common to hear it from an ex, but it's a similar spiel companies give you when they send out an automated rejection. But, sometimes, it may actually be you. You may be unknowingly giving prospective employers a reason to pick another candidate. Look through this list to make sure you're not sabotaging your own job search:

• Nonexistent LinkedIn — One of the first things your prospective employer will do is google you. Having a LinkedIn is a good way of getting the information you want them to see instead. Setting up a LinkedIn also makes it easier for recruiters to find you, so you may not even have to look for the job yourself. In this day and age, having a LinkedIn is almost the norm, and not having a profile can make you look outdated.

• Suspect online evidence — You know all those pictures or tweets about that "crazy night"? It is a good idea to remove them from the Internet. Remember, what you upload or say online has a habit of coming back to haunt you, so if you don't want the risk of exposure, just don't put it out there to begin with. Even if you set privacy controls, you may make a mistake, the privacy controls may change without you knowing, or your friend may take a screenshot of your comments and pass it around. Anything can happen, so be very careful!

• Not following up — It's common courtesy to thank the hiring manager after the interview, and this gesture of thanks can go a long way. It's also good to follow up (but not too much!) to check in with them, because accidents do happen and sometimes emails can go missing.

• Getting discouraged easily — Perhaps the world seemed to have ended when you didn't get the job you wanted. The worst thing to do is crawl under a rock and lick your wounds. You can indulge in the pity party for a day or two, but don't let this completely derail your job hunt. Keep your head up and know that a lot of people are in the same boat that you are in. Treat job hunting as a full-time job, and you increase your chances of finding employment when you're actively looking.

• Leaving mistakes unfixed — You need to ask other people for feedback to point out mistakes that you may be missing. Get a second or third opinion on your résumé and cover letter, and ask a friend to mock interview you.

• Ignoring your network — These days, it's even harder to get a job if you're not using your network. Many companies like to hire internally or already have a candidate in mind as soon as the position is available. Having a huge network will increase your chances of being thought of as a candidate when there's a job opening. If you have someone in the company refer you for a job, you'll probably have a higher chance of scoring an interview. Relying on your network is also a good way to find out about the word-of-mouth jobs that the public isn't aware of.

• Generic is your middle name — Don't just use a general template for your cover letter and résumé for every company. Instead, tailor each and every one. Take a careful look at the job description and note what they're looking for, and craft your application so that you look exactly like the candidate they need.

• Overhyping it — It's easy to get carried away when you find a listing of your dream job. Try to keep yourself from getting too attached to one position so that you don't subconsciously close yourself off from finding other opportunities.

• Jumping the gun — Don't assume that references will be willing to act on your behalf — you've got to ask them first. Catching them off guard may not be a pleasant surprise for them, and you need them to speak positively of you.

• Lying or being honest to a fault — Conduct yourself professionally, which means you shouldn't tell any lies (because those can easily be verified) or give up unnecessary information. For example, telling your interviewer all the details of why you hated your ex-boss won't exactly endear you toward her. You can always politely refrain from answering questions if you feel uncomfortable.

SEE ALSO: 7 Tips For Getting A Fat Pay Raise

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Anyone who watched the moon landing or uses the internet can attest to the strong tradition of scientific innovation in the United States. But China is now poised to blow past the U.S. to become dominant in science and engineering, as it has already done in global trade.

A team of researchers from the University of Michigan and Peking University in Beijing published a study highlighting China's growing scientific dominance in a recent issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Specifically, they focused on China's potential to knock the U.S. out of its spot as the world's undisputed leader in the science, tech, engineering, and math fields — collectively called STEM.

The researchers write: "Two recent reports by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine have raised concerns that the United States may soon lose its scientific leadership role and suffer negative economic consequences."

These three charts make their case.

China is churning out a staggering number of science graduates.

While China and the U.S. currently award science and engineering degrees to an equivalent proportion of their populations, China has sharply increased the number of graduates in these fields — and the U.S. does not seem poised to catch up anytime soon.

Chinese students also receive more American doctoral degrees in science and engineering than any other foreign students. Between 1987 and 2010, there was a threefold increase in the number of Chinese students in these programs (from 15,000 to 43,000).

China's science and engineering labor force is exploding.

The U.S. has a much smaller population and yet is still ahead of China in terms of how many people work in science and engineering fields. But while the growth of the U.S.'s STEM labor force has been slow and steady, the growth of this specialized workforce in China has exploded in the last 10 years. The paper attributes this to the expansion of higher education in China that began in 1999.

Chinese scientists get paid more than American scientists.

People who pursue science in China have much better earning potential than their counterparts in the U.S. Chinese scientists are paid better than their highly educated peers, while in the U.S., the reverse is true. U.S. lawyers, for example, go to school for less time than Ph.D. scientists, but make much more money.

"When talented youth face alternative career options, everything else being equal, more Chinese would be attracted to science than Americans," because of the pay the researchers write.

The PNAS researchers identify "four factors [that] favor China's continuing rise in science: a large population and human capital base, a labor market favoring academic meritocracy, a large diaspora of Chinese-origin scientists, and a centralized government willing to invest in science."

Still, scientists in the United States have some serious advantages, since, as the researchers note, "China's science faces potential difficulties due to political interference and scientific fraud."

SEE ALSO: MAP: China Totally Dominates Global Trade

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One of the biggest fears for many college graduates is finding a good job that pays well and has solid career prospects.

Some career paths are going to be more beneficial and open to a recent grad. To help new degree holders find the right field, we looked at the University of California, San Diego's fifth annual list of "Hot Careers for College Graduates."

For this report, UCSD looked at four criteria — "current employment in the field, projected growth in the occupation between 2010 and 2020, median annual salary in the occupation, and workplace environment characteristics."

The study also looked at "bridgeability factor," a yes or no decision "based on whether a college graduate could bridge into the career with one or two years of study or reskilling." Several careers — such as nurse, veterinarian, and pharmacist — scored well on UCSD's criteria, but would be unobtainable for an untrained college graduate.

Almost half of the careers in the top 10 dealt with computers and technology, including the top two on the list. Although two different types of software developers — applications and systems — tied for the first spot on UCSD's rankings, we decided to solely designate systems software developers as the number one career, based on its stronger long-term job prospects.

#10 Insurance Sales Agent

"As the population lives longer, there will be an increased need for insurance agents; the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects this career path to increase by 22% by 2020. Our research shows there are 336,740 insurance agents nationwide, earning a mean annual salary of $63,400. Although one third of all insurance sales agents in 2010 reported having at least a bachelor’s degree, only a high school diploma is required for entry to this job — a unique factor among the top ten hot careers."

— Via UCSD "Hot Careers for College Graduates"

#9 Public Relations Specialist

"Compared to other jobs on the hot careers list, public relations specialists represent the smallest number of people currently employed (201,280), but the field has a projected growth rate of 23% by 2020 ... The mean annual salary in the field, counting both corporate and self-employed public relations specialists, is $61,980."

— Via UCSD "Hot Careers for College Graduates"

#8 Management Analyst

"There are a reported 540,440 employed nationwide at present. All industries — even government organizations and not-for-profit organizations — rely on the unique expertise of management analysts to operate efficiently. With the onset of the global economic recession that began in 2008, utilization of management consultants has been growing, and demand for these professionals is projected to continue to grow by 22% by 2020. The mean annual salary for management consultants is $88,070."

— Via UCSD "Hot Careers for College Graduates"

Tips on crafting a resume and asking stellar interview questions are helpful—but when you’re looking for a job, your geographic location might be just as important.

Kiplinger rounded up a list of the nine U.S. states with the most promising job markets. Read on and find out if yours made the cut.

At the top of the list is North Dakota, with 3.3% job growth in 2014 (the national average is 1.9%) and only a 2.6% unemployment rate. The state’s increasing number of shale oil and gas development positions are likely to attract more job seekers. This might up the unemployment rate a bit, but the economy is still healthy.

Texas and Arizona are both slated to have 2.6% job growth in 2014, partly due to their quickly expanding high-tech, energy and bioscience industries. The housing market in Texas is improving, and Arizona is recovering from its collapse as well.

Utah will add nearly 35,000 jobs this year, a 2.5% increase from 2013. If its 3.8% unemployment looks a bit high for America’s fourth-fastest growing job market, it’s likely because the state’s booming industries, from information technology to construction to hospitality, are attracting a significant number of job hunters.

Similarly, Colorado, with a 2.4% job growth rate and over 63,000 new jobs this year, has a slightly high unemployment rate at 6% (though it’s still below the national 6.3%) because so many Americans are looking into the state’s higher-paid sectors, such as mining, manufacturing, health and education.

Idaho and Florida are experiencing 2.3% job growth, with a 5% and 6.2% unemployment rate, respectively. Similar to other mountain states, Idaho’s job growth is largely due to the energy and high-tech industries; and the pace of hiring in construction, information-technology, manufacturing, education, and health is quickly picking up steam. Large corporations like Hertz are relocating their headquarters to Florida, boosting employment rates and increasing housing sales in the Sunshine State.

Though Oregon experienced an especially bad recession on many fronts, its bounce-back is impressive. As its housing market improves, more jobs in construction are becoming available. Portland-based manufacturers of hardware and software are also expanding.

Georgia’s 2% job growth is good news for those in manufacturing, with big businesses like Caterpillar and Baxter, a prescription drug company, setting up shop. Meanwhile, aviation and auto companies are also thriving.

And some good news for job seekers everywhere: all 50 states can predict some job growth this year—and the national rate is the highest it’s been since before the Great Recession.

SEE ALSO: 23 Ways To Ruin Your Chances During A Job Interview

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Does a preference for "meaningful" work necessitate a lifetime of modest compensation?

Not for those who choose to go into medicine.

That's the finding of a new study from the online salary- and benefits-tracking company PayScale.

Using a combination of Bureau of Labor Statistics data (on compensation) and responses collected from about 374,000 PayScale site visitors (on whether they find their jobs meaningful), researchers at PayScale found that doctors tended to have the best combination of high compensation and a positive response to the question "Does your job make the world a better place?"

Overall, the group with the best combination of meaning and money is surgeons, 94 percent of whom report finding their work meaningful and whose median compensation was just shy of $300,000. They did, however, also report high levels of stress.

PayScale found that people employed in a group broadly labeled as "community and social service workers"—therapists, clergy, directors of religious programs—were most likely to report that they found their work meaningful, at 84 percent. Clergy, in particular, thought their work was making the world a better place: 97 percent answered in the affirmative.

Unsurprisingly, this group isn't getting rich in a pecuniary sense: Clergy had a median annual pay of $45,500; directors of religious programs made $35,900; marriage and family therapists came in at $47,100. The report noted that jobs in these fields are more likely to be filled by women and that, in general, female-dominated professions were more likely to be high-meaning and low-earning, the lower right-hand corner of the chart below.

Of course, many jobs earn little in both cash and fulfillment. Low-paying service jobs—food prep, cashiers, fast-food cooks—were both poorly compensated and not meaningful (the chart's lower-left area). No professions at all fell in the chart's upper-left-hand reaches: highly remunerative and not very meaningful. Those employed in legal services (which includes lawyers in addition to paralegals, clerks, title examiners, etc.) were doing the best of the low-meaning jobs, making $49,000 a year.

Lawyers, the top-earners of the bunch, make on average $89,800 and 40 percent said their jobs made the world better. (They too reported high stress.) Financial analysts have the same rate of finding "meaning" in their work as lawyers do, but they make slightly less—$64,900. Over email, PayScale's lead economist Katie Bardaro added that these compensation numbers are national medians, so outliers such as top Wall Street bankers don't push the circle for financial analysts up into the upper-left quadrant.

Of course, not everyone prioritizes finding "meaningful" work, and the report adds that job satisfaction "is not necessarily tied to job meaning." Gaming supervisors—people who run tables in casinos—report high levels of job satisfaction (80 percent) but low meaning (22 percent). OBGYNs, in contrast, don't find their jobs very satisfying but do find them meaningful (they're also paid well for it—more than $200,000). 

Lastly, surveys like this give a very broad-brush picture, and any given job can diverge wildly from these reported rates. Do lawyers working in criminal defense feel the same way about their jobs as those working in corporate litigation? Unlikely, but that's not the level of granularity we've got here.

SEE ALSO: Here's How Much Money Doctors Actually Make

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LinkedIn makes twenty times more revenue per user than Facebook. 

Much of this is thanks to LinkedIn Recruiter, the company's $8,200-a-year product for headhunters. 

As Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj Piskorski explains in his new book, "A Social Strategy: How We Profit From Social Media," this is one of the things that distinguishes LinkedIn from its peers: while friending someone on Facebook opens you up to their private life, making a LinkedIn connection doesn't avail that much more information about a person.

"LinkedIn is one of those sites where we form these connections and set these profiles," Piskorski tells Business Insider. "But people actually don't do a lot of communication on the platform with each other, relatively speaking." 

The value for users lies in searchability. 

"Most of the activity on LinkedIn is recruiters going and searching through your profiles again and again and again," Piskorski says. "That's where most of the action is." 

With that in mind, we were stoked to be sent the below infographic from British social media consultancy LinkHumans, which walks you through crafting a highly fetching profile. 

SEE ALSO:  What 12 Super-Successful People Wish They Knew At 22

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Have you ever wondered how the Amish tradition of rumspringa can change your life? A couple of months ago, I came across a wonderful write-up by Sophie Heawood in The Guardian that says why new-millennium adults of the west need to adopt it more to live a more fulfilling life.

Rumspringa is an Amish tradition where young people are allowed to live life on their own terms before they return to their traditional lifestyle - an equivalent of the pre-college gap year.

A gap year is not a novel concept, but it is not so much in demand in India before you start university or even your first job. However, professionals in their 30s and 40s seem to be more inclined towards rumspringa nowadays, choosing to walk away from their hectic lifestyle without scheduling a return.

The corporate culture chooses to call it sabbatical, but most HR professionals call it 'breaking free' - a clean break from your old job and even your old life for a while.

"The difference is just a thin red line. You take a sabbatical when you want to do something specific - take a course maybe or travel or volunteer. But you tend to return to your old life, relaxed and rejuvenated," notes career counsellor Sanchit Mangotra. "In contrast, breaking free is a total turnaround that impacts you both personally and professionally. The scope is much wider than a traditional sabbatical and the outcome might not be what you anticipated," he adds.

3 reasons to opt for a grown-up gap year
Although India numbers are not available yet, UK media reports say more than half of their career-gappers were in their mid-30s or older in 2013, compared to only 8% in 2012. Then there are new terms like grey gappers, indicating 55-plus people who are taking inspired career breaks. Of course, naysayers will condemn it as a career suicide. But here are three reasons to do it if you value yourself as an individual.

1. If you think there's a career misfit: Not all of us are as lucky as Farhan Qureshi of the movie 3 Idiots and often make a wrong career decision during our academic years. If you are in your 30s, been in the job for a few years and don't think it's your niche, it's the right time to go for a gap year and take a real hard look at what you are doing. If you are fed up with your job or have been laid off, it is bound to trigger negative feelings and affect your self-esteem. In such a case, your gap year would mean a lot of hard work - from learning a new skill to finding a new role and even starting a business of your own. But it will be worth it in the long run.

2. If you have a more pressing issue: This is usually the reason behind sabbaticals, but chances are your line of work or your company doesn't offer it. There could be loads of top priority things in your life that would call for a long break. It can be something as crucial as raising a baby/looking after aged parents or you may want to nurture a hobby/passion that you have neglected till date (for me, it's a series of forest treks across India). Whatever it is, if you strongly feel about it, go, do it now and forget everything else. Some people even take their families along and if you can manage to do it, it could be the best time ever for you and your dear ones.

3. If you feel you are in a rut: Both personally and professionally. This is, perhaps, the most complex mindset that drives us to an early burnout and a desire to take control over our life all over again. This may lead to intense and unpredictable changes - I have once come across a couple in their mid-40s who have left their banking jobs and sold their Bangalore home to start an organic firm in Kerala. If you really feel a strong urge to rediscover yourself and reinvent your life because you are stuck in a rut and your life is not going anywhere over the years, take a break and do the needful.

Plan and make provisions before you leave
Money matters even when you are redefining your life - especially when you have aged parents or a growing family to look after. Many of us feel limited by these factors while others are too desperate to start off as soon as possible, instead of making some judicious plans. Keep a tab on these three things even when you are on a career break.

1. Take care of your investments: Your investment portfolio and credit rating should not suffer even when you are away from a regular job and putting your life in order. Plan beforehand, make savings your top priority and ensure that you have as much fund as possible. Don't be a defaulter if there is a loan running or you are making credit card payments. You can rent out assets (think of short-term lease if you are away from home and not using your vehicle) to generate some additional income. If you plan to be away for a long time, you can even consider selling some of the assets. Store away only a bare minimum for reuse when you are back. A working vacation or freelance work also pays well if you are suffering from cash crunch.

2. Retain your insurances: Stay insured as the money will always come in handy - be it a medical emergency or damage/loss of goods. Travel insurance is another essential that you must not skip.

3. Keep networking: Keeping in touch with the old crowd will keep you updated about the industry scenario and could even land you a freelance opportunity during the gap year. But the most sound advice came from a LinkedIn connect who has so rightly said, "Become friends with people who aren't your age. Hang out with people whose first language isn't the same as yours. Get to know someone who doesn't come from your social class. This is how you see the world. This is how you grow."

That's all there is about breaking free - you are doing it to keep growing. As for the risk of stepping out of your life and career, it will all be there when you get back. For now, go.

SEE ALSO: The Humble First Jobs Of 15 Highly Successful People

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When Cameron Russell was 16 she walked to a newsstand in her hometown of Cambridge, Massachusetts, picked up a fashion magazine called Allure, and found something strange: Cameron Russell.

"I barely recognized myself," she tells Business Insider. "I couldn't believe it was a picture of me. But of course it wasn't really. It was hair, makeup, styling, lighting, post, all that. And it looked really sexy, which I had never even considered in my presentation — I was only just 16." 

That was 11 years ago.

Now, at 27, Russell has modeled for Calvin Klein, walked runways for Victoria's Secret, and landed the cover of the Italian edition of Vogue, one of the most coveted spots in fashion.

It all started when she was scouted on the streets of New York as a teenager. But of course there's more to the story.

"The real way I became a model is I won a genetic lottery,"Russell explained in a TED Talk that's been viewed 7.7 million times. 

"And I am the recipient of a legacy," she continued in the talk. "Maybe you're wondering, 'What is a legacy?' Well, for the past few centuries, we have defined beauty not just as health and youth and symmetry that we're biologically programmed to admire, but also as tall, slender figures and femininity and white skin. And this is a legacy that was built for me, and it's a legacy that I've been cashing out on." 

How much does she cash out? When asked for the kind of money she makes per gig, Russell is coy — "that's such a New York question," she scoffs — as well as candid. She says that since was a teenager, she's been making more money than her mother Robin Chase, who founded Zipcar. 

It's an unsettling contrast.

"Our society often values sexuality and women looking pretty more than women's ideas and women doing great things," Russell says. "Modeling is one of the few professions where women out-earn men, and that's because we're more valuable objects and ornaments. And there is something very disturbing about that, but I've benefited from it."

That TED Talk has turned Russell into something of a public figure. She wrote an op-ed for CNN. She was profiled in the Telegraph UK, New York Magazine, and New York Times under the headline, "Cameron Russell, a Model, Puts Looks Aside." She says that she gets stopped on the street more for her TED Talk than any of her other work. 

With that newfound platform, Russell has moved into arts-based social activism.

When she's not modeling, she runs Space-Made, an art incubator in Brooklyn, and serves as managing editor for an "experimental" magazine" called Interrupt.

The magazine is a response to the themes she addressed in her TED Talk: privilege and access to media.

Russell, who studied economics at Columbia University, rattles off the relevant statistics: 6% of directors of the top 250 grossing films are women, 3% of creative directors are women, 20% of op-eds are written by women. Interrupt aims to open up that access by bringing a different editor-in-chief with every issue, and thus publishing a variety of voices. 

She's come a long way since that newsstand in Cambridge. When she was a little girl, she told everybody that she wanted to be president. She met Bill Clinton when she was 10; she remembers that he told her to stay in school and meet as many different types of people as she could. She says she followed most of his advice. 

When she was 16, Russell thought her modeling career would be a few gigs and a good story. The next summer, she attended the Naval Academy Summer Seminar in Annapolis, Maryland — she was thinking about join the Navy when she grew up.

But Ford Models scouted her. Initially, she thought modeling would be "an experience" and a way to pay for college, since modeling careers tend toward brevity. Between the opportunities modeling afforded and the disenchantment she felt toward politics, she steered away from going after the Oval Office. 

Now it's more runways and art spaces.

After more than a decade in this career, Russell marvels at the fact that she feels so comfortable in the fashion capitals of Paris, Los Angeles, and London. The fashion world is small, she says. In these 11 years she's worked with maybe a thousand people. By now she knows everybody. 

"When you walk through an airport or look through a magazine, you can name every single girl and you probably know most of the people who worked on the shoot," she says. "That's kind of funny. When you're looking through a magazine, you'd think every single person's a different person, but every third girl is actually the same girl in a different outfit and makeup."

Same girl, different team, different day, different product.

This is the model's daily grind. 

On the day of our interview, Russell's call time was 8 a.m. Next comes hair and makeup, then fitting the clothes, and then they shoot until about 5.

The whole thing is a team experience, she says. It's not her voice being expressed; it's somebody else's fantasy or inspiration.

Modeling, Russel says, does take some skill.

"It's going to sound ridiculous," she says, "but knowing how to pose, how to maintain a level of engagement and variation for a day of shooting is actually a skill. When you start, you totally don't know how to do it, so you have to have a lot of direction. Later on, you can carry up to 40 pictures a day for a client, which is part of the reason they hire you." 

For each photo, the photographer will shoot a couple hundred frames. This makes the model's work an initially awkward challenge.

If a photographer asked you to do a couple poses "you might put your hands in your pockets or lean over," she suggests. "At first you feel totally uncomfortable, because you're like, 'are you supposed to move around in front of all these people staring at me like a weirdo?'"

The other weirdness is the relentless flakiness modeling forces upon you. Russell describes her schedule as "totally insane": You get booked on jobs in other countries two days before you have to leave, making it impossible to set certain plans with collaborators or friends. 

Maybe that's why so many models are on Instagram. Russell says she's "not very good" at the social network; her peers have way more followers than her. But she takes the selfie-filled app as a cultural case study, saying it's fascinating to see what models post, since it's the first time that models are posting pictures of themselves to the world. That's one of the contradictions in the modeling industry. 

"I've taken tons of pictures of myself in underwear for my clients to sell that underwear," she says, "but to take a picture of myself in underwear and post it to Instagram is kind of unimaginable." 

Instagram, like the magazine and the art space, is about a person's voice.

"There's something nonobvious about a model becoming an activist," Russell says of herself, "because by most understanding and most reality, we are incredibly privileged and very far away from a lot of these issues. But I feel quite connected to these ideas in part because I have been a model for a really long time, which is a profession where you are basically voiceless."

"I'm so incredibly grateful to fashion and modeling," she says, "so that's not meant in a negative way. What I've been thinking about for 11 years is, 'How can I take this access to media where I'm sort of voiceless and turn it into something where I have a voice?' And I think about that for all our editors too." 

SEE ALSO: 'It Just Takes Your Breath Away': What It's Like To Step Into Space For The First Time

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When it comes to gender disparity, the world of commercial airline piloting is one of the most skewed with a whopping 97% of all commercial pilots being male (4000 female commercial pilots vs. 130,000 male worldwide according to The International  Society of Women Airline Pilots). 

Those numbers shift slightly when you factor in women who are qualified to fly private planes but not commercial. But there is still a huge difference in the number of males compared to females even in this case. 

According to the US Civil Airmen Statistics, in 2011 there were about 617,000 qualified pilots in the United States, 41,000 of which were women, which means just over 93% of all pilots in 2011 were men.

So what gives here?  Do women just not like flying? Are the airline industry and the training schools just sexist?

On the latter issue, at one point like in so many industries, yes. As discussed in this article on Helen Richey, who became the world’s first female pilot “to fly a commercial airliner on a regularly scheduled mail route” on December 31, 1934, she quit after only 10 months due to how poorly she was treated by male staff.

Among other things, Richey was barred from becoming a member of the Pilot’s Union and was forbidden from flying in anything other than fair weather. It should be noted here that these restrictions were being placed on a woman who once crawled onto the wing of a plane she was flying to repair a tear.  She also spent years flying stunt planes.

Another thing that historically was holding early female pilots back was the fact that to become a commercial pilot, one needed to be subjected to various strength and height requirements. Since women are generally shorter than men and there is often a disparity in physical strength, many women were barred from even applying to become a pilot. However, in recent years this has gotten much better, to quote The International  Society of Women Airline Pilots: “These requirements have mainly fallen by the wayside. The only requirement is that a prospective pilot can fly the simulator provided during the interview process, without undue problems due to height or strength.”

As for the issue of sexism in more modern times, according to pilot and editor of Aviation for Women magazine, Amy Laboda, “I can tell you that [female airline pilots] have made tremendous progress, and the reason … is because most of the dinosaurs are gone… The men who didn’t want women in the cockpit have mostly retired.”

Today, it’s generally not so much that those within the industry have any issues with female pilots, but, interestingly enough, the people who respond most poorly are the passengers. Within the industry, there’s actually been a huge drive by some airlines in recent years, for example by British Airways, to increase the number of females applying for given positions, and thus hopefully start to even out the numbers. So with some companies, while you’re still going to need to bring the skills and the experience to the table, you actually might have a leg up on the competition at the moment if you’re a woman trying to become a commercial pilot.  If you’ve got the same skill and experience as a male applying, one would think the companies looking for more female pilots will pick you over your equivalent XY competition.

So why haven’t the numbers evened out since the sexist “dinosaurs” have all retired? Well one theory is that the sheer amount of time one needs to dedicate to being a pilot, and brutal travel schedule, turns a lot of women off because they’d rather focus on their domestic life and stay closer to home. This is a nice theory and perhaps is a factor, but there are only colloquial sources to back it up. Further, the same can be said about a lot of industries that don’t see anywhere near a 4,000 vs. 130,000 type split in number of women vs. men working in the respective fields.

Another theory is that, for whatever reason, young girls never see being a pilot as a career option whether because the field doesn’t fit young girls’ interests or perhaps simply because you rarely see female commercial pilots in real life or on TV or movies; so there is a lack of visible role models. A study conducted by British Airways in their efforts to learn why more women don’t become commercial pilots discovered that among young boys, “pilot” was the second most popular career choice. With girls, it wasn’t even mentioned. So whatever the underlying reason, most young girls just don’t find becoming a commercial pilot appealing. This also, perhaps, explains why the numbers are so skewed even in the private pilot license arena, still with a 93%/7% male vs. female split.

All that said, it’s generally thought that the biggest factor stopping women from becoming commercial pilots is the fact that a lot of pilots come from a military background, an option that wasn’t even open to women in many countries (and some still not) until relatively recently. In the U.S., for instance, until 1993 women weren’t allowed to fly combat aircraft.

So if a woman wanted to become a commercial pilot before such restrictions were lifted, they’d have to foot the $100,000-ish bill to acquire all the necessary training and experience.  And keep in mind, commercial pilots just starting out don’t get paid much.  According to FAPA (Future and Active Pilot Advisers), first officers can start out as low as $20,000 per year. Needless to say, investing those same dollars and hours into other careers can often be much more lucrative, particularly up front. As commercial pilot Jill Schilmoeller said, “You have to love flying, because you start off getting paid horribly and you are gone a lot…”

To get around the training cost, one essentially has to join the military, where once again we find a huge disparity in the desire to do so in men vs. women.  So not only do we have an issue of young girls not dreaming of becoming pilots, but we also have significantly less women joining the military and becoming pilots there, and maybe making “commercial pilot” a future option for themselves, even if they didn’t think of it as an option as a child. While most men also don’t see the military as an option they want to pursue, the small number that do and then become pilots there still eclipse the number of women doing it.

Combined with the cost of getting the training all yourself without the military footing the bill, this results in a relatively huge pool of men applying for commercial pilot positions compared to women. So when it all shakes out, even without any sexism in the industry itself, the result is that, at least for now, it will be a rare flight you take where one of the people flying the plane is a woman.

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