The world changes at an ever increasing fast pace which means Technologies, Industries and Jobs are changing just as quickly.
This article will help you understand what pushes these changes and how they can affect your career choice and the future of UK jobs.
Why should you look at the Future of Jobs? Just imagine as a teenager you decide you want X career, you spend all of high school and college studying for exams that you pass with flying colours, you attend university to specialise in your career. Several years later, you leave university with your industry qualification only to find the job you have studied so hard for, no longer exist.
Technology Changes Jobs
Let’s take a simple example, in the 1940’s-1950’s thousands of women were employed to copy type, using a type writer. These jobs are now redundant as one person can now write a letter on a computer and have the computer personalise it for thousands of customers, many companies go one step further and use an automatic e-mail systems.
More recently you can see how new technology is changing industries and jobs; in most supermarkets you will now find a Self-Service Checkout, where one employee monitors on average 8 self service tills, compared to 8 workers working on 8 tills. It won’t be long until the percentages of checkouts are self service tills, leading to a loss of supermarket cashier jobs.
What Drives the Changes?
When you understand the Drivers you can often predict the future of jobs. There 5 main factors that drive industry changes.
- Environment
- Cost
- Speed
- Safety
- Reliability
Using a simple example, to help reduce the destruction of forests and improve the environment companies may send out fewer letters by post. To save cost on stamps a business might use e-mails as a preferred method of communication. E-mails also help to increase speed, compared to hand delivered mail. There is a reduction in safety risk using e-mails compared to hand delivered mail and e-mails are less likely to be stolen or lost (even thought this can happen with e-mails) meaning they are more reliable then hand delivered mail.
The example above was written to give you an idea of what can push a change, but if a large amount of organisations reduce the amount of hand delivered mail they send out, this could lead to a loss in postal worker jobs. At the same time this could increase the amount of ITC jobs, Internet fraud protection jobs and Internet marketing jobs. What changes are being made in your workplace, job sector or location that will decrease current jobs or bring in new job sectors?
Future Jobs
We are already aware that the UK will see a reduction in low skilled jobs and an increase in highly skilled jobs (the government are looking to have a work force at a minimum of a Level 3 – equivalent to A-Levels, workforce) in the near future, in many sectors that change has already started to take place.
Below is a taster list of possible future UK jobs, you need to see which career would suit you? A careers advisor can help you pick a career that will match your personality, identity and beliefs.
Medical Robots – really? Yes hospitals have already started to use medical robots to help with technical operations.
Organ Designer – designing and growing organs for made to measure for human and animal implants.
Mind Capacity Doctors – we are now trying to understand how the brain works, how to access and store large amounts of different information and research is being undertaken in the study of excellence. There will also be a need for stress release doctors.
We will also still need Doctors, Dentist and Nurses.
Space Tour Guides and Space Travel Agents – many countries are investing in space, using satellites to improve communication and media; imagine in the future, as the fire service receiving a 999 call, the operator will be able to check by satellite if the call is real or not. The next step in the space sector may be space as a holiday destination.
Energy Researcher – with the green policy, scientist are always looking for new renewable energy, we have already heard of vehicles being run of potatoes, there will be high amounts of investment into energy research.
Skilled Manufacturing – with an increase in space activity, manufactures will be making, testing and producing space goods, space food and space equipment.
High Raised Farming – with a growing population, farming could be on the change with high rise farming, similar to a block of flats but with food sources growing on each level.
We have already seen farms, where cows can milk themselves by standing on a computerised milking machine.
Internet Marketing– with the I-Pad and Internet phones, we can already see the increase in Internet marketing and the selling of the Internet goods such as e-books. There are many young millionaires who have stared a successful business from their bedroom.
Green Auditors – auditors to check how green a company is, giving advice on becoming greener. On a bigger scale, greener homes using renewable energy, cities with green areas, reducing city pollution and having urban farms.
Wind Turbine Engineers – as you travel to the country or out to sea, you will often see wind turbines, the amount of turbines you will see are set to increase and this will bring new engineering and maintenance jobs.
Cyber Security– with increasing Internet companies, Internet marketing and Internet banking, we are all aware of the Internet pirates. The cyber security team will help you lower Internet risk.
Designers and Inventors– with new technologies, Internet phones, green cars, new energy, there has always been and will be in the future a need for inventors and designers throughout all business sectors.
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What jobs do you predict will be available in 5, 10 or 15 years?
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