Emerging Jobs, Present and Future

Despite a global deceleration in economic growth in the face of growing headwinds, global labor markets are generally tighter than they were a year ago. And that means that, on net, economic opportunity is more plentiful for most people. But some corners of the labor market are growing faster than others… and that’s the focus of our Emerging Jobs Report this year.

When many people think “emerging jobs”, the first thing that comes to mind is cutting-edge technology like artificial intelligence (AI). Anecdotally, and in our data, AI professions are a rapidly emerging job field: they rank near the top of our Emerging Jobs list for the third consecutive year. The impact of AI on the workforce is a topic of high interest to us and we’re exploring it in a variety of contexts, including looking specifically at what’s happening in Europe and contributing to Stanford’s annual AI Index.

But while AI and its impact on jobs is important, leaders should pay attention to the scores of emerging jobs that aren’t squarely in the AI and automation space. When looking at the list of emerging jobs, there are many that are at most “AI-adjacent” (robotics and cybersecurity), but we’re also seeing a surge in “AI-resistant” (mental health technician, customer success) jobs.  

We may think AI’s impact on jobs in the labor market is small right now -- but even in the future, when that impact accumulates and gets bigger -- there will be a surge in demand for jobs that are either impossible to automate or complementary to automation/AI technologies.

If I were to fast forward 10, 20, or 50 years out and think about what will show up in that year’s Emerging Jobs reports, I’d expect to see a few things:  

• First, at least some of the jobs from this year’s report turn out to be short-lived (blockchain engineer), reflecting trends that seemed to be promising at the time but didn’t pick up.  
• The second is that, if technology really transforms the labor market as much as some people anticipate, we’ll see lots of “technology-complementary” roles that we can’t even conceive of in the present day.  

Who would have predicted 25 years ago that “robotics” would be an emerging field, pertaining not only to physical robots but also to virtual ones?