The Bleak Future of Work Will Be a Boondoggle for This Profession

Automation.

Machine learning.

Artificial intelligence.

With phrases like these, should any of us be surprised that the average person might wonder what their role in the future of work will be? While today’s elementary schools teach students to code and learn robotics, one has to question how much or what type of coding or robotic engineering will be needed by the time these students graduate from college…or will machines also be able to be programming and designing themselves by then?

Perhaps I’m over-dramatizing the future, but I do think that too few people realize the exponential effect of technology automation once it supplants things that were so common in our lives as to be taken for granted. I remember reading about Amanda Knox’s return home to the U.S. in 2011 after spending four years imprisoned in Italy. She didn’t know what an iPhone was because she’d never seen one. She was only in prison for four years and in that time, the smart phone became ubiquitous. That’s how Houdini-fast our lives can change these days, and perhaps even faster as algorithms, computer processing chips, and the drumbeat of technological innovations grow faster and faster.

And while I agree that we need to teach today’s children something that we hope can be applied towards future employment, are our school systems themselves innovative enough and able to keep up with the fast-pace of change? How do we encourage thinking that leapfrogs ahead 20 years to come up with the knowledge and skills that will be required then rather than what’s required now? Are we encouraging – rather than suppressing -- that kind of imagination?

In the meantime, as more and more workers find themselves displaced, doing work they never intended to do, under-employed at what they went to school for, or unable to find work after they reach an invisible-but-there-all-the-same age barrier that marks them as unwanted goods, one profession will continue to grow in demand as a result: the counselor.

There’s job security in counseling

The counselor -- a catch-all phrase meant to encompass therapists, psychiatrists, coaches, advisers, and social workers – prospers as mankind suffers. Jobs are lost, marriages suffer, children ache for attention or security, the family unit breaks down. People lose their way (or lose themselves in narcotics or alcohol), their sense of purpose, and even their humanity. They then seek professional guidance to steer them through the morass of their pain, confusion, and suffering.

It’s already happening.

• As of January 2017, psychologists, social workers & marriage counselors in the U.S. made up a $15 billion industry (Ibis);
• The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics says the job outlook for mental health counselors and marriage and family therapists is "is projected to grow 19% from 2014 to 2024, much faster than the average for all occupations." On one list of 30 fastest growing jobs by 2020, this places marriage and family therapists at #18 and mental health counselors a #28.
• Business coaching and advisory services have been projected to reach $11 billion by 2019; and
• The self-help category (based on books, videos, and self-guided education generally authored by some kind of counselor or another) is estimated to also be a $10 billion dollar per year industry.
• The anticipated demand for mental health & substance abuse facilities, currently a $16 billion market, has grown so great that big investors are getting into the game.

That’s a whole lotta dough being spent on getting help, Folks.

I am not belittling this system. Hardly, as I’ve been a beneficiary of both sides of it myself. I’m just raising it as an ever-present and growing reality.

Ever since western civilizations evolved from agrarian to industrial manufacturing and now one comprised of more college-educated professionals, its denizens have become ever more defined by their work. “What do you do [for a living]?” is one of the most common questions we ask upon meeting one another. Being unable or unwilling to answer that question has huge implications on the modern psyche.

Fending off human obsolescence

As I was composing this post, an article crossed my transom, and I think it supports my points here. Titled, “The Meaning of Life In A World Without Work,” author Yuval Noah Harari coins a phrase to describe people who by 2050 have been disintermediated out of employment altogether: the useless class. Harari writes,

“People must engage in purposeful activities, or they go crazy.”

I rest my case.

While Harari posits that virtual reality existences might occupy the useless class, he also mentions but wrongly underplays (in my opinion) other critical factors in our race against the machine:

• Creativity
• Flexibility
• Reinvention
• Imagination

The useless class will arise if these skills and the additional skills of resilience, courage, problem-solving, risk/reward balancing, and future-gazing are not nurtured and developed in people -- all people. It’s these skills that allow people and workforces to be adaptive, to innovate, to see beyond the future that exists right now.

I love this line from the still-working 97-year-old only living Nuremberg prosecutor, Ben Ferencz, who Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes recently interviewed. When she accused him of being an idealist, Ferencz said:

“Nothing new ever happened before.”

Think about that wisdom and perspective, and go create some new opportunities for mankind.

Other related articles by Hollis you might enjoy:

“Reinvention: The 21st Century Career Survival Skill”

“Hail the Re-Emergence of the Liberal Arts Generalist!”

“Why You Want To Lead A Team With Transferable Skills And How To Build One”