What will the jobs of the future be?

Ricardo Palomo-Zurdo, Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Business and Professor of Financial Economics, discusses in an article in The Conversation what the jobs of the future might be.

Divining the future is not within the reach of either human or artificial intelligence. But humans do have the ability to glimpse trends and forecasts that set the course for a plausible better professional future, while we believe we can rule out career options that seem to have no future, or that will have to reinvent themselves in order to survive, giving rise to the jobs of the future.

30 November 2023 marks one year since the global launch of Chat GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer). A popular and viral phenomenon that reached the public after a few years of development (since 2018) and is revolutionising the way machines work for or with humans.

This very unique and transcendent technological disruption is questioning the way we work and the role of many jobs, and is deepening the obvious concern that the exponential technological revolution we are living through has been causing for some years now.

The jobs of the future

Technological vertigo is an increasingly common social sensation. A phenomenon not free of controversy about the advantages and disadvantages of the new digital era, because, if in the past mechanisation was of a manufacturing nature and in many mechanical tasks with little human added value, it now adds an exceptional impact on cognitive tasks and, particularly, on white-collar professions.

At this crossroads of the jobs of the future, perhaps employees should worry less about being replaced by machines and more about being replaced by other humans who know how to take advantage of them.

The mismatch between demand and supply of jobs is already apparent, with a situation of unfilled positions – many already with profiles corresponding to new trends that characterise the jobs of the future – coexisting with significant unemployment rates.

Professional projection of the new generations

And what is the projection for the future? We will see that in the coming years some jobs will be destroyed, others will be created and many will be transformed. Therefore, not having new generations prepared to meet the demand for the jobs of the future may prove to be harmful for the future of nations.

Jobs of the future: promising fields

We have already internalised that many of the jobs of the future will be linked to technological advances, emerging needs in society and changes in the labour market. Below, the World Economic Forum sets out ten occupational fields that will be at the centre of future and adequately paid jobs in various parts of the world, although this cannot be generalised and must also take into account the specific conditions of each region or country:

1. Software developers; while the advent of generative AI will have an impact, given its ability to generate programming code.
2. Cybersecurity specialists.
3. Health professionals (doctors, nurses, therapy specialists).
4. Data engineers and data scientists.
5. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning specialists and AI “questioners” (or prompters).
6. Specialists in renewable energies.
7. Psychologists and mental health professionals.
8. Biotechnology professionals.
9. Logistics and supply chain experts.
10. E-commerce specialists