At uncertain times like these, you see a lot of articles describing the so-called "hot jobs," which offer the best opportunities for employment and job security in the coming years.

Some occupations on these lists are predictable.

Earlier this week, new University of Southern Maine President Selma Botman spoke at a USM Corporate Partners breakfast about how difficult it is to find enough nurses with graduate degrees to train the next generation of nurses.

The shortage is chronic, even though lots of people want to be trained. The shortage itself has become self-perpetuating.

Pharmacists and other health care occupations also are perennially on the list.

Beyond these predictable jobs, though, it gets a lot trickier to determine what kind of workers will be in short supply in the years ahead. This is particularly true at a time when the Internet and shifting global markets have upended the status quo.

The current shortage of energy auditors and insulation installers is a great example. For years, people offered training classes that interested relatively few people. The market itself wasn't booming.

But the run-up in energy prices has caused a spike in both the number of people interested in doing the work and in consumers hoping to hire them. Training is the bottleneck.

Of course, it's possible that there might be a glut of such workers 10 years from now. Maybe so many people will get trained that their numbers will outstrip the work. Nobody can predict with certainty what will happen with volatile energy prices and whether alternative fuels will emerge.

Still, the state does try to predict where things are headed. Every two years, the Maine Department of Labor publishes an outlook for where it thinks the jobs will be -- and where they will disappear -- a decade in the future.

This year's offering includes jobs in health care, as you'd expect.

It also says that aging Baby Boomers will increase the demand for other occupations, such as those at dining establishments and other leisure-related businesses. Meanwhile, the Internet and big-box retailers will hit employment in areas such as bookstores.

Of course, a decade ago, nobody would have predicted the changing workforce that we have today. The Internet was not central to most people's lives, gas prices were stagnant and, well, health care was exploding.

I guess it's nice to know that, in an uncertain world, some things never change.

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