Office Administration Degree

Office and Administrative Support is projected to have the third highest number of jobs needed between 2002-2012 according to the Department of Labor.

What do they do?

As the reliance on technology continues to expand in offices across the Nation, the role of the office professional has greatly evolved. Office automation and organizational restructuring have led secretaries and administrative assistants to assume a wider range of new responsibilities once reserved for managerial and professional staff. Many secretaries and administrative assistants now provide training and orientation for new staff, conduct research on the Internet, and operate and troubleshoot new office technologies. In the midst of these changes, however, their core responsibilities have remained much the same—performing and coordinating an office’s administrative activities, and storing, retrieving, and integrating information for dissemination to staff and clients.

Secretaries and administrative assistants are responsible for a variety of administrative and clerical duties necessary to run an organization efficiently. They serve as an information manager for an office, plan and schedule meetings and appointments, organize and maintain paper and electronic files, manage projects, conduct research, and provide information by using the telephone, postal mail, and e-mail. They also may handle travel arrangements.

What are the Career Possibilities?

Secretaries generally advance by being promoted to other administrative positions with more responsibilities. Qualified secretaries who broaden their knowledge of a company’s operations and enhance their skills may be promoted to other positions such as senior or executive secretary, clerical supervisor, or office manager. Secretaries with word processing or data entry experience can advance to jobs as word processing or data entry trainers, supervisors, or managers within their own firms or in a secretarial, word processing, or data entry service bureau. Secretarial experience can also lead to jobs such as instructor or sales representative with manufacturers of software or computer equipment. With additional training, many legal secretaries become paralegals.

Office Administration Occupational Outlook

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook,  http://stats.bls.gov.

“Secretaries and administrative assistants held about 4.1 million jobs, ranking among the largest occupations in the U.S. economy.” Occupational Outlook.

Office Administration degree

Job Title	No. of Jobs
Secretaries (except legal, medical, and executive)	1,975,000
Executive secretaries and administrative assistants	1,526,000
Medical secretaries	339,000
Legal secretaries	264,000
TOTAL SECRETARIES	4,104,000

“Office and administrative support occupations. Office and administrative support workers perform the day-to-day activities of the office, such as preparing and filing documents, dealing with the public, and distributing information. Employment in these occupations is expected to grow by 6.8 percent, adding 1.6 million new jobs by 2012. Customer service representatives will add the most new jobs, 460,000. Desktop publishers will be among the fastest growing occupations in this group, increasing by 29.2 percent over the decade.”

Related Occupations for Office Administration degree

Job Title	No. of Jobs
Billing and posting clerks and machine operators	507,000
Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks	1,983,000
Customer service representatives	1,900,000
Desktop publishers	35,000
File clerks	265,000
General office clerks	3,000,000
Human resource assistants, except payroll and timekeeping	174,000
New account clerks	99,000
Office and administrative support supervisors and managers	1,500,000
Order clerks	330,000
Payroll and timekeeping clerks	198,000
Procurement clerks	77,000
Receptionists and information clerks	1,100,000
Tellers	530,000

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook,  http://stats.bls.gov

For more information regarding the Office Administration degree or Administrative Assistant certificate, contact Mary Wilson, maryw@wcjc.edu, 979.532.6320.