Did you know, the top 10 jobs in demand in 2021, did not exist in 2010?
What exactly does this mean? It means that in just over a decade, our world has changed so much, that entire new industries were created. And these industries didn’t just come into being; they caught on and thrived, to the extent that some became billion-dollar giants.
All in a matter of 10 years.
Never before in the history of mankind have entire industries sprung up in such a short space of time as a decade.
Now, when I talk about industries here, I’m not talking about individual businesses, but entire new industries comprising of clusters of businesses within them.
An industry is defined as a group of companies that perform similar business activities. There are dozens of industry types in today’s economy, such as car manufacturing, tourism, insurance, commercial banking and software.
In the past decade we saw completely new industries emerging, such as biotech, cryptocurrency, autonomous vehicles, data science, 3D printing and machine learning.
Being new and innovative, these industries needed people to do new and innovative things, therey giving rise to new job descriptions. And due to the rapid growth of these industries, those jobs have become the most in-demand in the world.
Now, you may be wondering what types of jobs are those? Here are a few examples:
- Machine Learning Engineer
- Social Media Manager
- Advanced Analytics
- Driverless Car Engineer
- Data Scientist
- Security: Activity Monitor
Let’s consider an everyday example. When you speak about an iPhone today, everybody knows what you are talking about. But if you mentioned the word iPhone in 2008, it wouldn’t have made sense. People might have thought you were saying “I phone…”, as if you were going to say you were going to call someone, but you did not complete your sentence.
Someone might have asked you: “You phone who? Please complete your sentence!”
Now, in a similar way, we have a whole lot of technologies that are emerging, that are creating new job opportunities, and new job descriptions that we have never seen before.
What does this all mean for us?
It essentially means two things. Firstly, that we are living in a time of rapid change, unlike anything our forefathers ever experienced; and that change is unpredictable. No one, no expert in the world, can say with certainty what the next decade or even half decade will bring.
Secondly, it means we will have to learn to adapt very quickly to these changes, and prepare for jobs that don’t yet exist. I know that sounds crazy, but that is the reality we are living in.