(FORTUNE Magazine) – Battling an inclement job market? Consider weather forecasting, where the extended outlook is bright. The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts 40% more civilian meteorologists by the year 2005, twice the expected rate of job growth overall. Warning: The actual number of such new jobs will be small; everyone talks about the weather, but only 20,000 people do so professionally. The pay, excluding salaries paid to TV stars: $20,000 to $60,000 per annum. These days, weatherpersons do a lot more than celebrate birthdays and dress up as Carmen Miranda. They must interpret vast sums of data spit out by ever more powerful computers. The National Weather Service forecasts that in six years it will produce 100 times its current volume of info. Mike Watts, a meteorologist at Federal Express, uses a workstation that allows him to do an erstwhile 90 minutes' worth of work in a few keystrokes. Fed Ex's 12 meteorologists use computers to post twice-daily forecasts for 160 cities. Pilots of the company's 444 planes catch up on the weather before takeoff. In the future, Fed Ex will feed forecasts directly to the cockpit, as commercial airlines already do. Another industry with staff forecasters is investment banking. At Shearson Lehman Brothers, security analysts use reports from Jon Davis, an agricultural meteorologist, to map housing starts and track gasoline demand. Says he: ''If a TV guy blows a forecast, someone gets wet on their picnic. If I blow it here, it can mean a loss for clients.''