Last week U.S News list­ed tech­ni­cal writ­ing as one of the 50 best careers of 2011.

Some inter­est­ing high­lights (at least for me):

• “Future employ­ment for tech­ni­cal writ­ers looks bright, espe­cial­ly for those with strong Web and mul­ti­me­dia skills, accord­ing to esti­mates by the Bureau of Labor Sta­tis­tics. Tech­ni­cal writ­ing posi­tions are expect­ed to grow by more than 18 per­cent, or 8,900 jobs, by 2018.”
• “It helps if you’re com­fort­able work­ing as a con­trac­tor, since com­pa­nies increas­ing­ly pre­fer to hire that way.”
• “The low­est-paid tech­ni­cal writ­ers earn less than $37,000, and the high­est-paid posi­tions earn more than $100,000. In some indus­tries, off­shoring may put down­ward pres­sure on pay.”

In Van­cou­ver, I know of two com­pa­nies who have exper­i­ment­ed with off­shoring their tech­ni­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions depart­ments to coun­tries like India. Although I’m not a fan of los­ing work to oth­er locales, I believe that off­shoring may make sense in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions: for exam­ple, when an estab­lished prod­uct has gone into “main­te­nance mode” and the edits to the doc­u­men­ta­tion are minor.

Anoth­er web site that puts “down­ward pres­sure on pay” is Elance, which enables out­sourc­ing to work­ers around the world.

As any­one on the globe can bid on a job, I’ve seen tech­ni­cal writ­ing assign­ments in which writ­ers are will­ing to work for peanuts (for instance, one writer com­plet­ed 17 jobs and had earned only $475). Hope­ful­ly, sites like Elance will always remain on the periph­ery for the sake of work­ers who are hop­ing to make a com­pet­i­tive, indus­try-stan­dard wage.

Check out the report (link to exter­nal web site).