Technology, science and engineering. Contrary to popular belief, this country is not producing enough graduates in these fields. You can easily get a 80k+ starting job at an of the big tech firms straight out of college.
It's not easy and you are not going to get 80k+ straight out of college. Lots of outsourcing and H1B visa workers competing for those jobs. Check out postings about tech market conditions from a tech job posting site. http://seeker.dice.com/olc/forum.jspa?forumID=10
A long time ago at least it seems now i seriously considered going to Alaska to fish for a couple seasons to make enough so i could day trade. Instead i got a loan, went back to college and it all went uphill from there. College of course was worthless but at least it was fun and something to take my mind off the obbsessive studying of the market.
As someone who works at these places, trust me the h1b thing is a myth. For one the H1b visas run out too quickly and then you have way too many rules. The problem is finding people qualified candidates. We are lowered the bar significantly but yet cant find people.
Take what I am about say with a grain of salt because my sampling data is very small. But on the other hand, it is first hand personal information. Most engineers I know don't get 80K straight out of college. It's more like 60k. But after 2-3 years of experience, 80k-100k is the norm. Engineerings jobs are very easy to come by. There isn't a single engineer friend of mine who has a hard time getting a job. All those being said, it's common knowledge that Tech sector crisis usually has a 6months to 1 year lag with respect to the financial sector crisis. Once the money is hard to come by, no company can sustain their normal business operations and expansions. A few tech industry giants have already started some massive layoffs.