Future Of Work: The Jobs Of Tomorrow And The Skills Needed To Succeed In Them

A report by the World Economic Forum, ‘Jobs of Tomorrow: Mapping Opportunity in the New Economy,’ takes an in-depth look into new job creation.
The report analyzes emerging professions of the future, and the skills that individuals need to develop to thrive in these emerging roles.
Interestingly, while tech knowledge will be critical for the future of work, so will ‘human’ skills including caregiving, leadership, learning, and development.

Some future of work scenarios paint a bleak picture for humans: robots will take over our jobs and automation will make human beings redundant.

Though there’s no way to tell whether that will be true 100 or 500 years from now, recent research has found that this will not be true in the next 10-20 years.

In fact, new technologies are expected to create more jobs.

A recent report by the World Economic Forum, ‘Jobs of Tomorrow: Mapping Opportunity in the New Economy’, takes an in-depth look into new job creation, emerging professions of the future, and the skills that individuals need to develop to thrive in these emerging roles.

The report identified seven key professional clusters that are set to yield 6.1 million new job opportunities in the coming three years alone (2020-2022). What’s more, if current growth trends hold, “these emerging professions will provide 1.7 million new jobs in 2020 — and that figure will see a significant increase of 51% to 2.4 million opportunities by 2022.”

Interestingly, and quite positively, the report found that while technology skills will be critical for the future of work, so will caregiving, leadership, learning, and development skills.

“In other words, the transition to the new world of work will be both human- and tech-centric.”

The Seven Key Professional Clusters of the Future

Data and AI
Care Economy
Green Economy
Engineering and Cloud Computing
People and Culture
Product Development and Sales
Marketing and Content

The number of job opportunities is rising, but workers will need to develop new skills if they want to succeed in the future of work.

According to the report, these seven clusters will represent the highest-growth jobs of tomorrow. The research also identified particular strong job growth in Green and Care Economy jobs, with the Care Economy being by far the most in-demand.

Data and AI, Green Economy, and Engineering and Cloud Computing professional clusters are expected to experience annual growth rates of 41%, 35%, and 34% respectively.

Job Growth Estimates by Cluster

37% of job openings in emerging professions will be in the Care Economy
17% of job openings in emerging professions will be in Sales, Marketing, and Content
16% of job openings in emerging professions will be in Data and AI
12% of job openings in emerging professions will be in Engineering and Cloud Computing
8% of job openings in emerging professions will be in People and Culture.
1.6% of job openings in emerging professions will be in Green Economy professions.

It is worth noting that “the absolute number of opportunities in Green Economy jobs and Care Economy jobs are most likely to change in tandem with new and unpredictable shifts in government legislation and business practices.”

Top 5 Most in-Demand Roles by Cluster

Care Economy

Medical Transcriptionists
Physical Therapist Aides
Radiation Therapists
Athletic Trainers
Medical Equipment Preparers

Data and AI

Artificial Intelligence Specialist
Data Scientist
Data Engineer
Big Data Developer
Data Analyst

Engineering and Cloud Computing

Site Reliability Engineer / Cloud Computing
Python Developer / Engineering
Full Stack Engineer / Engineering
Javascript Developer / Engineering
Back End Developer / Engineering

Green Economy

Methane/Landfill Gas Generation System Technicians
Wind Turbine Service Technicians
Green Marketers
Biofuels Processing Technicians
Solar Energy Installation Managers

People and Culture

Information Technology Recruiter
Human Resources Partner
Talent Acquisition Specialist
Business Partner
Human Resources Business Partner

Product Development

Product Owner
Quality Assurance Tester
Agile Coach
Software Quality Assurance Engineer
Product Analyst

Sales, Marketing, and Content

Social Media Assistant / Content Production
Growth Hacker / Marketing
Customer Success Specialist / Sales
Social Media Coordinator / Content Production
Growth Manager / Marketing / + Sales Development Representative / Sales

Skills of the Future

The report found that the jobs of tomorrow require both technical and cross-functional skills, and individuals who want to succeed in the future of work will need to develop a range of distinctive skill sets.

The World Economic Forum divided the most in-demand skills into five clusters:

Business Skills
Specialized Industry Skills
General and Soft Skills
Tech Baseline Skills
Tech Disruptive Skills

However, it’s important to highlight that “the type of opportunities that are set to materialize are also changing fast, in tandem with the evolving needs of the technological and economic context.” This means that professionals will need to develop effective processes and mechanisms to learn new skills in a fast-changing environment.

Top 5 Skills for Each Professional Cluster

Care Economy