The workforce of tomorrow

When thinking about the future of work by 2030, it is hard to think about how technology will affect our economy. Now there is new research that makes it easier for parents to help prepare their children for future jobs. Children often ask what they want to be when they grow up and it is the job of parents to mold and influence career interests. That is why Pearson along with Oxford University and Nesta conducted a study looking at the nation’s top jobs by 2030. Will technology eliminate most of the workforce by 2030 or will the economy transform in ways where we will work tighter with technology and create even more jobs in the future? Find out in our short satellite presentation with Pearson and learn what types of jobs we can look forward to in the future.

Leah, are robots and automation going to take all the jobs from our kids or can we have some hope for the future?

I think we can have hope for the future and your right, robots are cool and the good news is they’re not coming to take away the jobs of our kids. So, parents can breathe a sigh of relief on that front. But we do know that technology is going to significantly impact both the economy and the jobs of the future along with a bunch of other trends. We need to sort of get out in front of that as quickly as we can to sort of reevaluate the skills that are going to be necessary. In the research that we’ve done, we know that one in ten workers are in jobs that are going to experience an increase in demand while one-fifth of the workers are going to be in jobs that are going to decrease in demand and that leaves about 70 percent of the rest of the population in jobs that are going to remain uncertain. We don’t know exactly what those jobs are going to look like and so we’ve really got to reevaluate the skills so that we can help people learn to work alongside and with the technology.

Amar, why is this study different from other studies that did predict that automation would have a larger impact on future jobs?

There’s a lot of work out there on this topic isn’t there and we think that a lot of that asks kind of the wrong question, which is our robots coming for the jobs which often leads to doom and gloom or even a fear of technology. We think the right question is what will those jobs look like and what skills more importantly can we build to prepare for those jobs, which then leads to a much more optimistic and action-oriented set of results. In addition to that, we in our research, looked at trends beyond technology, such as urbanization — more people moving into city’s, globalization demographic change. So, we wanted to see how all of those trends come together to impact the future of work, not just robotics and so we feel that the findings are optimistic they’re action-oriented and they’re much more nuanced about how we prepare for that future.

What jobs will be most in demand when our children enter the workforce?

So, we’re seeing industries in education and healthcare — those are going to go up. As people live longer lives, they want to live healthier lives and happier lives. We’re also seeing creative jobs or design jobs going up. There’s a lot of demand for those types of services and products and we’re also seeing some interesting ones like one of the top ten jobs is librarians who would have predicted that librarians are going to be a rising job for the future. But when you dig into the skills that are required to be a librarian, it’s not really about navigating stacks of books, it’s about helping people find information and make sense of information. So, if you look at that way, librarian becomes closer to an information scientist and so then that becomes really exciting future job that companies and universities and people are going to want to have access to. So, we think that the research kind of gets us away from the fear of technology and into how humans and technology will work together to shape the future.

Leah, are there any key skills that will help prepare our kids for the future workforce?

Yeah that’s a great question and for me personally it’s one that I’m really obsessed with. I have a son who’s in high school and I think that the key is actually exactly what you just said. We need to focus on the skills that are going to be in high demand and not so much on the jobs of the job titles that are going to be in high demand. The work that we’ve done shows that that some of the key skills are going to be things like accommodation of interpersonal skills, complex decision-making and problem-solving, as well as, those sorts of skills that are we call uniquely human skills like social perceptiveness, judgment and decision-making things like that, because those are the skills that are going to help us work with the technology and alongside of the technology. The other thing I think that that we are very committed to is the fact that you’re going to have to develop those skills not just in high school and not just in college it doesn’t stop with a diploma or degree and that you’re going to need to actually commit to a lifetime to lifetime learning, because you’re going to be developing those skills throughout your life. All the way through all the different jobs as an adult.

What can our schools and education companies like Pearson do to better prepare our children?

First thing is that we hope that this research really prompts a dialogue and a discussion among people in the education community at all levels and with parents around what does the future of learning actually look like. I know at Pearson, we’re really excited about these findings because we think that this is going to help us as we help inform sort of the product creation and the learning materials that we build out and how we reach the students more effectively and teachers more effectively. It’s a complex and important conversation that we need to have and there has been a lot of doom and gloom and anxiety around automation taking our jobs but we think that this report helps to provide a blueprint that’ll help guide us into the future.

Where can people go for more information?

So, your listeners can go to future skills dot Pearson.com for the full report as well as a series of videos that will help you kind of understand more about the findings.

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About the Author

David Morales is the Executive Editor of The Hype magazine. A graduate of Eastern Michigan University, David has a background as an artist manager, writer, blogger, drummer, and in the human services industry. He is passionate about helping others, learning and has a deep empathy for the creative process. You can follow his social media @dcypherstudios