Attention bosses: Today is Administrative Professionals Day. Do we have to spell out what that means?

It means today is the day that bosses — and office workers supported by an admin — say thank you to the hard working administrative assistants, clerks, receptionists, support staff, and other administrative professionals for the countless tasks they handle day in and day out.

Sure, much of what they do is in their job description. Thank them for doing their job so professionally. Much of what they do is not in any job description. Those are the countless courtesies they do because they’re part of the team. Things like ordering fine tipped pens just for you. Or helping you collate that special report when the copier wouldn’t. Or showing you the easy way to create a table of contents.

It was 60 years today that PR exec Harry Klemfuss and the former National Secretaries Association (now known as the International Association of Administrative Professionals) established the first National Secretaries Week.  It both recognized secretaries for their workplace contributions, and served to attract people to the budding profession.

There are more than 4.1 million secretaries and administrative assistants working in the United States, and 8.9 million people in administrative support roles. Over the six decades since the first celebration, the nature of the job has changed dramatically. Almost exclusively a woman’s job in 1952, in 2012 it is not at all uncommon to find men in admin positions. Few had any college 60 years ago. Today, the typical admin has at least an associate’s degree.

And where once clerical tasks were the primary part of the job, now support staffs produce reports and spreadsheets full of data, create presentations, participate in project teams, handle most office purchases, and make decisions in the absence of managers.

If you doubt the importance or value of the work they do, you figure out how to unjam the copier, soothe an upset client, or recover the nearly completed project that  just disappeared from your computer.

That’s why at offices all across the country, administrative professionals will be showered with cards, flowers, and balloon bouquets. Bosses will lunch with their admins. And office workers will show their appreciation with lunchroom potlucks or pizzas.

How ever your workplace recognizes the support staff, make sure that at the very least, you go out of your way to say a personal “Thank you.”

Salaries for administrative professionals, stagnant during the worst of the Great Recession, have begun inching up. The 2011BenchmarkPro survey results from Compdata Surveys found executive assistants earn an average base rate of $51,600 per year. That’s up from $50,200 in 2010. Administrative assistants are earning $36,400 per year, reflecting a 2% increase since 2010. The salary for executive secretaries has increased from $45,000 in 2010 to $46,100 in 2011, a 2.4% increase. Those are national averages. Salaries differ significantly by geography and industry. For instance, executive assistants in utilities earn an average $57,200, while those in hospitality earn the least at $45,500. Comdata Surveys

Image: graur codrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

You walk into the office kitchen or break room with cup in hand only to find that someone took the last drop and didn’t make a new pot. Annoying, isn’t it? Or how about that mysterious supply cabinet that seems to swallow pens the way a dryer does socks? They go someone, but there’s never a note telling you to order more. We could go on; everyone has their own story to tell. Admins, though, bear the brunt of inconsiderate office mates, since they’re the ones who do the ordering, make the copies, answer the phone, sort the mail, and a million other things. Here are some tips to promote office harmony from an office etiquette pro. AEAP

Not that long ago, all the buzz in healthcare was about the nursing shortage. Hospitals, skilled care facilities, medical offices, not to mention those other providers we don’t generally think of — insurers and public health centers among them; it seems everyone was hunting nurses.

Today, the nursing shortage has eased, though jobs – both permanent and temporary – for experienced nurses with special skills still remain. Elsewhere in healthcare, the demand is as high as ever. As a whole, the industry is expanding rapidly with demand for professionals and skilled workers (and even entry-level) approaching record levels.

In the 12 months from January 2011 to January 2012, the healthcare industry added 312,500 jobs. That’s almost a sixth of all the new jobs the economy created. Hospitals alone accounted for some 96,000 of the new healthcare jobs. The number of jobs in physician offices — and that includes positions from receptionist, to billers, records clerks, physician assistants, technicians, patient counselors — grew by almost 65,000.

Indeed, the job search engine, reports that in one year — from February 2011 to February this year — the number of job listings for healthcare workers rose 21%. That’s one of the largest increases of the 13 sectors Indeed tracks. If percentages don’t impress you, consider this: In February Indeed counted 700,000 jobs in healthcare. Retail, which was second in total listings, had less than half that.

Topping the list of openings are medical assistant jobs. There were 241,382 listings for them on Indeed in February. Also among the top 10: pharmacy tech, receptionist, clerks, and phlebotomist.

While hiring is keen across the board, one overlooked area is beginning see the early signs of a candidate shortage, at just the same time demand is poised to take off.

Healthcare management positions are expanding and the need is only going to going to grow for all the same reasons that healthcare generally is growing.  More managers are needed to supervise growing staffs to care for the aging U.S. population, and to prepare for the influx of new patients that will be covered when the federal health insurance program takes full effect in a couple of years.

The industry is well aware of those twin issue. Less well known is the impending retirement of senior and mid-level managers, many of whom are in their 50s and 60s. At the same time, while colleges and universities are expanding their healthcare degree programs, fewer than 70 made the U.S. News list of graduate programs in healthcare management. Fewer still have nursing or medical schools making it almost impossible to earn a dual degree.

Two years ago CNN/Money’s Top Jobs list ranked hospital administrator positions 36th on its list of 100 best and in-demand jobs. The median salary in the CNN report for an experienced administrator was $98,000.

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However, even more modest management positions are seeing salaries rise as the competition grows keener.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics offers this list of salaries for managers in specialty practices: $54,314 in gastroenterology; $54,201 in dermatology; $58,899 in cardiology; $48,793 in ophthalmology; $44,910 in obstetrics and gynecology; $51,263 in orthopedics; $51,466 in pediatrics; $48,814 in internal medicine; and $47,152 in family practice.

Naturally, the top pay goes to the most experienced professionals. However, even first-time manager salaries are increasing, as the industry recognizes the impending shortage of administrators.

At the entry-level, experience in the specific area is the number one requirement. To move up the ladder, business administration, finance or similar higher-level coursework is not only desirable, but a requirement of many employers. For the more senior positions, an MBA or advanced degree in hospital management is indispensable.

Women are especially in demand, as hospital administration has been a typically male-dominated industry.

America’s Best Companies To Work For have never been easy to work for. Everyone wants to work for them.

Google, which garnered the #1 spot on the just released Fortune list of 100 best companies, gets something like 3,000 applications — a day. But in the three months leading up to the release of the list, Google advertised 1,130 openings. Collectively, the top 10 companies on the list only had 2,133 jobs.

Wanted Technologies, a business intelligence company, analyzed those openings and compared this year’s list to last year’s. It found that the top 10 companies on the list had fewer openings posted this year. Of the top 10 most frequently listed openings, all were down in double-digits.

Two of the top 10 categories, however, accounted for 25.3% of the total openings.  Office managers and admin support staff supervisors were the most frequently listed jobs, with 300 openings posted online since late October. Wanted said the number was down 36.4% from last year.

Second in volume were job listings for software engineers. The 240 jobs the companies posted was off by 55.2% from last year. Wanted doesn’t say which of the companies had the most openings in each category, but just on the total numbers Google likely had the most openings for computer professionals and probably for office managers and supervisors as well.

“Volunteer for the (fill in your office event) committee? But I’m just the temp!” Forget that kind of thinking if you want to stand out and be remembered. Whether you’re hoping for a permanent offer or want to be the first one considered for other temp jobs, get involved with your co-workers, says HR consultant and recruitment expert Laurie Ruettimann. You want them to think of you as a colleague and teammate. If you have solid ideas on how to improve a job, suggest them to your boss. The Wall Street Journal.

Office temping is one of the tried and true ways workers have of earning a paycheck while proving their value to a company. It’s also a great way to test out a company or a career without committing for the long term. But don’t make the mistake of assuming just anyone can walk into an administrative support job. Today’s employers expect even entry-level workers to have all the basic office skills. Often, advanced knowledge of software like Word, Excel and PowerPoint is required. Equally important are a person’s people skills. And, says a report from Monster, so-called “soft skills” may be the deciding factor in who gets the job. Monster

Just because you’re a reader of this blog, we have a special gift for you: An extra day next month to catch up on things.

OK, OK. Caught us. It’s leap year, so everyone will get that extra day. But hey, if you’d rather use it for fun, then stop doing stuff that only offers the illusion of working.

You know what we’re talking about. Things like checking your email every time that message icon pops up, or dropping what you’re doing to respond. Or actually reading every article on a Reply All list.

Author, business strategist, and consultant Dorie Clark has five suggestions for becoming more productive this year. These aren’t the usual time management yadda, yadda. None of those “finish one task before going on to another” kind of tips. Though, and here is a brief digression, it’s worthwhile to keep those routine efficiency tips in mind. And to actually practice what the experts preach. For instance:

• Make a daily list of key tasks and check each off when completed.
• Don’t just sort paperwork; handle it, then file it.
• Prioritize tasks. Important things first.

No less an authority on work and gens X & Y than Penelope Trunk says most multitasking reduces productivity. So, to be most productive, don’t multitask.

Now, back to Dorie Clark, whose time suck avoidance list reads like a list of secret sins. There’s the “Reading Annoying Things” ban, she proposes after confessing  to having “a dozen newspaper and magazine subscriptions, the result of alluring specials ($10 for an entire year!) and the compulsion not to miss out on crucial information.”

For your amusement, here’s a time wasting video addressing the very point Clark makes.

Her list (blogged on the Harvard Business Review, no less) provides ammunition to ignore “Mindless Traditions” and to eschew doing “Work That’s Not Worth It.”

Sure, it’s hard to break old habits, which is what makes taking Clark’s suggestion a good workplace resolution.

CareerBuilder says to expect companies to step up their hiring of temporary workers this quarter. With 35% of companies running leaner than before the recession, and business picking up, CareerBuilder predicts that 27% of all businesses will hire temporary workers between now and the end of March. And of those hiring temporary workers, 35% expect to make them permanent. The biggest demand will be for occupational and physical therapists, speech pathologists, administrative assistants, network engineers and Java and .net developers, and marketing assistants, among others. CareerBuilder.

Starting salaries for office professionals in the U.S. and Canada will be going up next year as the hiring climate for experienced workers becomes more competitive and the time it takes to fill jobs lengthens.

That’s what Robert Half International says. The company ought to know, it’s been surveying businesses on their hiring and comp plans for 60 years, incorporating what it learns  with it’s own client and placement data and making the information public in a series of salary guides. It’s administrative support staffing salary guide is in its 17th year.

Replacing downsized staff as business improves is the key driver for the 3.4% growth in starting salaries for the 60 or so administrative positions included in the guide. Another driver is the ever-growing healthcare sector, says Robert Half.

The company says that many of the workers will come from staffing firms as companies exercise caution in hiring permanent staff. However, managers and executives surveyed by Robert Half say productivity has been hurt by not having enough support staff, which requires existing workers to take on multiple tasks.

Also driving the salary increase — second only to the average 4.5% for tech workers — is the difficulty in finding skilled office staff. An Office Team survey of HR managers found 48% of them were having trouble finding good people. No surprise then, that 63% of those HR managers worry about losing their best workers.

Most in demand will be executive and administrative assistants, so these positions are seeing increases of between 4 and 4.5 percent in starting salaries. Employees already in these jobs may see their own salaries grow by at least that much or more, as retention worries grow.

The most sought after technical skills for support staff, says the report, are: knowledge of database management software; project management; nonprofit management software; SAP and other enterprise resource planning software; and social media.