7 Jobs for Job Security in a Recession

[More appears here on the role of a government manager.]

College professor: Ah, tenure. No firing without just cause and due process. Although colleges are increasingly hiring for limited-term and part-time (adjunct) faculty, the tenure track is still secure if you can get it. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, now a public policy professor at the University of California-Berkeley, wrote in an end-of-2008 blog post: "I'm not too worried about my job because I have tenure here at the University of California, although maybe I should worry because the state is technically bankrupt. Still, I'm one of the lucky ones."

Federal judge: OK, so it may not have broad application (how many of us will turn out to be federal judges?), but lifetime tenure is hard to ignore. The policy is intended to insulate judges from outside interests but also, according to American Enterprise Institute resident scholar Norman Ornstein, to attract the best and brightest to the law profession. It's important to note that most judges don't have that luxury: They're appointed to renewable terms of four or six years.

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