The needle of a changing job market and a cruel economy hangs above our heads, and things don’t seem to be improving anytime soon. We live during a slice in time, where rapid automation threatens to completely eradicate human beings out of the mass employing the manufacturing sector.
So what can you expect from a changing job market that itself doesn’t know where it is leading to? What jobs will be prized in the future? Let’s dig this furrow even further.
Customer Service and Hospitality
Basically, to an employer, a computer can do busy-work faster than a human ever could. The catch is that computers cannot replace the warmth aspect of a human (yet!). The customer service of today, cannot even hold water to the customer service of the future. The customer service industry right now, is littered with human beings, slogged like mindless machines.
The future holds much better prospects, as every major sector imaginable will look to employ a human touch, under the many layers of AI, logistics, and algorithms, by the truckload. The only difference is that it will not be as focused on ‘bending-over-backward’ for the customer, like customer service of today (the ‘Customer Is Always Right’ adage may be an embarrassing relic of the past, in the future).
The employers will look for individuals with high analytical skills, along with a strong command over computers and software.
Food Processing
This one’s a no-brainer! The food industry is ballooning, and we allegedly have lazy millennials to thank for it. But the real reason happens to be much more on the face than that.
The food-processing industry manages to rake up raw materials like vegetables and optimize the saleability, to ensure that the customer would rather purchase processed meals than spend even more time and money to freshly cook as don’t traditionally (Indians are overwhelmingly young in numbers. They lack both, time and money, to properly feed themselves).
Additionally, since packed food is rising in popularity, jobs like health inspectors and quality analysts will be as much in demand, as food outlets, and the entire food-delivery empire.
Retail
The dreaded retail industry is transforming itself into a monster that nobody can control, not even the merchandising and supply chains that birthed it. Jobs in the retail sector have some of the largest attrition rates for any major sector currently.
The quality of jobs themselves, border on human rights abuse. The average retail worker works for 10 hours straight, without even provisions for sitting down. But the fact of the matter is, that people need clothes to wear, and more people populating the Earth, will mean more clothes for the industry to sell.
The Retail sector is demanding, and sadly, on the rise. Good for the consumer, a horrible twist in fate for the jobs market.
Transport and Tourism
One major observation that anyone who invests in the share market experiences can make, is the stability that stocks of transportation companies offer. It is an industry on the rise, along with tourism, that is rapidly shifting gears into a completely new look for itself. Much can be attributed to express transportation, and the myriad job opportunities it offers – from the many sorting centres, to outlets and delivery, which are evolving with every turn of the page.
Tourism is dying, to give birth to a new version of itself. A greater push towards diversification and digitalisation will give rise to an almost automated, yet personalised experience. Employers will look to seek logistical and analytical minds come even more into the fray.
Final Word
A whole new world awaits us in the future. While we were hopeful that desirable jobs like Starfleet Officer and Video Game Testers would be abundant, a sluggish economy is ensuring we wouldn’t be over there anytime soon.
Nevertheless, skilled people will be the go-to recipients of fresher, newer opportunities, as graduations and degrees will be rendered moot due to changing times.