There will be plenty of jobs in the future: You just won’t be able to do them

In the not-so-distant future, millions of workers will have different jobs than they have today. What those jobs will be exactly, is still very much up for debate.

Within the next 15 years, nearly 15% of the global workforce may need to switch jobs, according to a new report released today by the McKinsey Global Institute. By 2030, 75 million to 375 million workers will change occupation categories while another 400 to 800 million could be displaced by automation and required to find new jobs entirely. Meanwhile, all workers will need to adapt and heighten their skills to keep up with advances in technology.

This shift in labor demand could be larger than anything that we’ve seen in the United States and Europe since the early 1900s when young workers left farms to go work in big cities, McKinsey outlines in its 160-pages of research.

Using history as a guide, McKinsey notes that advances in technology have typically led to more employment and productivity. In the United States, the share of workers employed in the agriculture industry declined dramatically from 1850 to 1970, but overall employment grew during that same period. By 2030, 8% to 9% of labor demand will be in new types of occupations and analysts predict that there will be enough new job creation to offset automation.

The big question, however, is if workers will have the necessary skills to transition into these new roles. In both developing and advanced economies, working in unpredictable environments (gardeners, plumbers) and doing jobs that require human interaction (teachers) will become more in-demand while physically demanding jobs (fast-food workers) or work that requires processing data (accountants) will fall by the wayside.

Today, a very small share of jobs require skills such as high-level logical reasoning and emotional skills. With the share of those jobs only increasing in the future, the challenge to educators will be to emphasize these traits in school and training programs. Currently, they are largely thrown into the usually ignored bucket of “soft skills.”

The good news is that an analysis of LinkedIn data suggests that workers already understand that they need to enhance their softer skills that are less susceptible to automation. Skills such as accounting and financial reporting are being added less frequently to member profiles whereas skills such as management are increasingly being showcased.

Of course, with skills such as high-level logical reasoning and effectively managing teams becoming more in demand, McKinsey predicts higher levels of education will be required in the future as well. In Germany, for example, the percentage of new jobs that ask for a college degree will increase by 4% by 2030 whereas, in the U.S., it will increase by 2%. Occupations in advanced economies with lower education requirements are rapidly declining, providing fewer employment opportunities for workers who do not pursue higher education. As a result, high-wage jobs will continue to experience the most positive percentage increases while middle wage and lower income professionals could continue to see their incomes suffer.

Only 2% of U.S. households saw their incomes stagnate or decline between 1995 to 2005. Between 2005 and 2014, that number grew to more than 80%, according to McKinsey Global Institute Director James Manyika.

“That's everybody, for the most part,” Manyika shared on LinkedIn’s Work In Progress podcast in October. “A big part of that was the recession… but the other part is that the way in which our economy works has been changing over time, and so we have to address this question of incomes, because this can give rise to political instability, dissatisfaction and the kinds of concerns that people have. And those kinds of concerns that then lead people to worry about trade, about immigration, about a whole range of things, but this is a real issue, and we're quite concerned about that.”

That said, the economy offers one fast-growing job that doesn’t require advanced education: home healthcare. By 2030, there will be at least 300 million more people over the age of 65 globally, McKinsey predicts. Alongside that we will need as many as 130 million workers globally in health care over the same time period. In the U.S. alone, if nothing is done and more workers don’t go into caregiving, there will be a shortage of at least 350,000 paid care providers by 2040.

Another sector where McKinsey is projecting massive job growth that doesn’t necessarily emphasize soft skills include jobs related to new technology. Overall, spending on tech is likely to increase by 50% in 15 years, which could create 20 to 50 million new jobs in both in-house and outsourced IT consulting. Meanwhile, investments in renewable energy to combat climate change could lead to 20 million new jobs as well.

This article is part of Work in Progress, a new series exploring what it means to earn a living today. Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or Google Play and see more stories at #WorkInProgress.

#NewWorldOfWork