Best Jobs of the Future: 2020 to 2050

Katy mentors and educates young professionals and helps those beginning their careers and financial journeys to make informed decisions.

The job market is constantly shifting and the changes are coming faster and faster. Today is very different from your grandparents’ generation. Even the jobs your parents held might not be in demand now.

We know the market will change even faster as technology advances. What does this mean for the year 2025, or even 2050? Some jobs that will be in high demand for future generations don't even exist today, but we can predict which career paths will be in demand 20 to 50 years from now.

The future is uncertain, but we can make solid predictions with today's information and predict the number of new jobs created in a field over the next 10 years. Present-day labor statistics (including The Bureau of Labor Statistics' most recent estimates) and industry trends can help form these predictions. Some of the list below is gleaned by looking at which sectors are growing quickly today, and other jobs come from predictions based on upcoming technology.

Read on to see which jobs and careers are likely to grow in the future.

Best Careers for the Future (2028+)

What are the best careers for the near future? With help from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), we see that the jobs predicted to see the most growth and demand are:

• Computer & Mathematical Occupations (especially developers, analysts, programmers, and information security analysts)
• Healthcare & Healthcare Support (especially mental health professionals, technicians and diagnosticians, nurses, personal care and service, and home health aides)
• Counselors & Therapists (especially physical, respiratory, or marriage and family therapists, substance abuse counselors, social workers, and speech and language therapists)
• Marketing Professionals (especially market research analysts and marketing specialists)
• Construction Trades (especially niche specialists)
• Media & Communication Workers (especially video operators and editors, interpreters and translators)
• Operations Specialties (financial managers, computer information systems managers)

These are great career paths for the future. Jobs in the healthcare field have huge growth predicted soon, and this earned them a place on the Best Careers for the Future list.

Top Business Jobs in the Next 10 Years

In the next 10–20 years businesses will have more access to data and automation. Parts of the jobs of people like accountants and admins will become obsolete. Workers using data to draw connections and improve processes will be in demand.

Business Analyst

Analyzing industry trends and watching the competition will be important. Business analysts will spend more time drawing conclusions and presenting them to management than making reports. Soft skills will be as important as ever to succeed.

Even without a background in analysis, you can pivot into a business analyst career by taking a respected online course in business analytics. Combine that specialization with your experience in an industry and you can work your way into more lucrative positions.

Best Future Tech Careers

Tech has seen a huge surge in the last 20 years and it will continue to grow. But the in-demand sectors will be more refined. Soft skills and high-level analysis will be the gaps every business is trying to fill. See any of these you're interested in? Learn how to prepare for a technical interview so you're ready for your next position.

Software Developer

You knew software engineers or developers would be on the list! But soon, it won't be enough to know how to code. Machine learning will replace the grunt work of entry-level programmers, so software engineers will need to add machine learning to their skillset to remain relevant.

A desirable software engineer will have high-level skills like data structures and an understanding of AI. Developers will spend more of their time integrating with other services and less of their time on specific code.

Self-taught coders will become a bigger part of the workforce.

Information Security

The future comes with more data and more ways to exploit it. Businesses will need employees to provide sophisticated protection, and workers in the IT security field will be in high demand to provide this protection. The nature of the work isn't likely to change much, but staying relevant in cybersecurity will be more and more difficult as new threats develop.

What do you think?

Top Marketing and Sales Jobs in the Future

Technology will make producing products more cost-efficient than ever. To stand out, businesses will invest more in marketing and sales. Here are a couple of marketing careers that will be at the top of the list in 20–50 years:

Marketing Analyst

Marketing Analysts will have more information available to them to make decisions. Now, analysts spend a lot of time gathering and processing data, but in the near future, a marketing analyst will be working software that does the processing for them and finds patterns on its own. The important part of the analyst's job will shift away from finding patterns to drawing meaningful conclusions from those patterns. This is a trend you'll see in many of these roles.

Sales

Getting customers to buy your product will be more important than ever as technology progresses. Workers in sales can expect to have smarter tools and more data about potential customers, but commission-based compensation isn't going anywhere. In the future, sales will still be a high-pressure job that pays well but only when you bring in business.

Best Medical and Healthcare Careers for the Future

As humans live longer, the medical field will continue to boom. Aging generations will need more care and medicine.

Physical Therapy

It's not just doctors and nurses that will have promising careers. Physical therapists were on the top of the list of jobs expected to outpace the market by 2050.

Assistants and aides for therapists is also a promising market. Most assistant positions can be secured with a four-year degree and training on the job.

Most of the work done by these positions will be similar to what is it today. Therapists and their assistants provide hands-on patient care that can't be replaced by a machine.

Healthcare Administrator

Hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics all need facility managers and administrators. These workers will handle logistics, insurance, and planning for a whole facility or just a department.

Why would you want to be a healthcare administrator? This position pays very well for relatively little education (Bachelor's). It can be a good way to help people even if you don't like the idea of becoming a doctor or nurse. Another benefit is that these roles can be found anywhere in the country.

Mental Health

Marriage and Family therapists, substance abuse counselors, mental health coordinators, and social workers will be in higher demand.

What Are Your Plans for the Future?

Best New Careers

Some of the best jobs of the future have not yet been invented or are just starting to see demand. Based on current-day predictions, the following careers may see big boosts in the future.

• Genetic Counselors
• Data Detectives
• Forest Fire Deterrent and Prevention Specialists
• Home Health Care Providers
• Robotics & Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Solar Experts (Photovoltaic Installers, etc.)
• Videographers & Video Editors

To read about more possible careers in the future, read Careers of the Future: 42 Professions of Tomorrow by Teodor Teofilov.

Worst Jobs for 2028 and Beyond

Best Careers for the Distant Future (2050+)

Further in the future, other jobs will be in demand as technology changes industries. These jobs aren't necessarily getting a big boost while the technology is still young, so they're not remarkable in BLS's growth statistics and more difficult to predict.

Robotics and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Robotics and AI are two technologies that are going to change industries. These will certainly be jobs in demand in the future.

• With robotics taking a bigger role in the industry, this will mean certain jobs will go away. Dangerous manual tasks will be replaced by robots (although manual laborers who keep up with the times will remain valuable).
• Artificial intelligence will remove the need for many jobs that have repetitive tasks. Workers will have access to more tools and data than ever before. The career paths that thrive will be those that involve data, like analysts and developers.

Will Robots Be the Workers of the Future?

New technology is rapidly changing the world. As tech automates more tasks, many people want to know: will robots take my job? The future of technology is hard to predict, but we can make good guesses about which tasks will be performed by robots by looking at current technologies. To learn more about this topic, read Will Robots Take My Job? The Future of Robots at Work.

Highest Paying Jobs in Demand in the Future

What will be the highest paying jobs in the future? We can't be sure. But of the careers that are expected to grow in the future, Sales Director and Software Developer will have the highest salaries.

Learn More About Future Jobs and Career Paths

The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook listing the current highest paying occupations.

This article is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge. Content is for informational or entertainment purposes only and does not substitute for personal counsel or professional advice in business, financial, legal, or technical matters.

© 2018 Katy Medium

Comments

oh on April 01, 2020:

Hi,

I hope you are well.

I got your reference from one of my colleagues that you are looking for a Social Media Marketing Executive. Is this for full time or freelancing?

sarah on August 25, 2019:

i want just to ask if financials will still be in demand the next years

Deborah J. on June 25, 2019:

Civil Engineers will still be in demand. It depends on what kind of Civil Engineer. Where the jobs are now and will be in demand now and in the future is Software Engineer. That is where it is at when it comes to the Engineering Field.

Syed Musa Hussain on May 26, 2019:

Hi! I am a 12th class pass and have my interest for becoming a Civil Engineer. Does this field have its scope in the upcoming future?