Future UK Jobs 2014-2020
The UK government has released its latest paper “Careers of the Future”
Background report – Dec 2014” this month predicting the increase and demise of various job sectors.
Overall high skilled jobs are on the increase and low-skill jobs are in decline. See below “source” for the full report.
Below is an extract from the paper.
Managers, directors and senior officials: The corporate managers category has been a significant source of employment growth for many years and this pattern of growth is expected to continue over the coming decade. The other category within this group is other managers and proprietors. This includes the owners and managers of small businesses, especially in the service sector. This category has also experienced steady growth in the past decade. This is expected to continue over the coming decade although the growth is moderated by the restructuring of the distribution and retailing sector, including the shift towards the use of the internet.
Professional occupations: All four of the professional sub-major groups experienced employment growth between 2002 and 2012 and this is projected to continue. The highest rate of growth for 2012-2022 is projected for Health professionals as the health sector begins to recover from slowdown caused by deficit reduction constraints. Science, research engineering and technology professionals and Business, media and public service professionals are also expected to see significant growth. All these professional groups are projected to increase their share of overall employment.
Associate professional and technical occupations: Substantial employment growth has been experienced by a number of these sub-major groups in recent years. Employment has grown most rapidly over the previous decade for health and social care associate professionals. The group was affected by cuts in public spending, but this is not expected to slow down the longer term trend. It is now projected to experience the most rapid rate of increase of all sub-major groups between 2012 and 2022. Growth was slowest over the past decade for science, engineering and technology associate professionals and for protective service occupations, both of which saw a net decline over the decade as a whole. The latter are expected to see some further job losses but things are expected to pick up for science, engineering and technology associate professionals as the economy recovers. The largest sub-major group in the associate professional category is Business and public service associate professionals, which includes specfic roles such as Sales accounts and business development managers. This is also projected to be by far the biggest contributor in this major group to future employment growth, contributing almost four times as many jobs as Health and social care associate professionals, the next largest contributor.
Administrative and secretarial occupations: A continuation of the decline in
employment is expected for this group as a whole as ICT displaces many such jobs.
Secretarial and related occupations, which includes secretaries, typists and word
processing operators, are expected to be particularly affected, reflecting their vulnerability to being displaced by advances in computer technology.
Skilled trades occupations: The recession has accelerated the already significant loss of jobs in many skilled trades occupations. Job losses in manufacturing and, post 2008 in construction, have impacted negatively on skilled metal and electrical trades, textile, printing and other skilled trades and construction and building trades. Construction trades are expected to recover over the coming decade, but this is not sufficient to reverse the overall decline for skilled trades. For textiles, printing and other skilled trades the pace of decline accelerates. Over the next decade jobs in construction and building trades are expected to grow more quickly than the average for the economy as a whole.
Caring, leisure and other service occupations: Historical employment growth in these categories is expected to continue over the coming decade. Caring personal service occupations were the most rapidly growing occupational sub-major group between 2002 and 2012. Although they slip into second place in terms of rate of growth over the period 2012-2022, in absolute terms they remain in top place, with an increase of over half a million jobs. A key driver here is the rising demand for services for an ageing population. The majority of these jobs are expected to be taken by women. The rate of growth in leisure, travel and related personal service jobs is expected to be more modest.
Sales and customer service occupations: This group is dominated by occupations
such as sales assistants and check-out operators in retail outlets who fall into the Sales Occupations sub-major group. This category has seen job losses in recent years as the retail and distribution sector restructures itself. Increasing concentration of businesses, competition from the Internet and technological developments such as automated checkout are expected to reduce the need for more traditional sales occupations, meaning that this pattern is expected to continue. In contrast, customer service occupations represent a much smaller but rapidly growing category. The demand for more specialist sales and customer care occupations is expected to continue over the coming decade.
Process, plant and machine operatives: This group includes a variety of occupations, some operating fixed plant in factories while others drive mobile plant and passenger and goods vehicles. Employment declined quite rapidly for the former category (process, plant and machine operators) over the last decade, linked to the loss of jobs in manufacturing. However, there were modest job gains for the transport and mobile machine drivers category. Over the coming decade, further substantial job losses are expected amongst process, plant and machine operators, whilst little change in the numbers of jobs for the transport and mobile machine drivers category is expected.
Elementary occupations: The elementary occupations consist of jobs that require little or no prior training. Employment levels across this group of occupations have been in long-term trend decline for many years, but there are some signs of this changing. The service sector, in particular, is beginning to generate a number of extra jobs in this area. Small job losses are expected for the decade as a whole but with some recovery in the second half of the period.
