Many of us love magazine and media stories that make projections of hot jobs of the future. When these projections are only five to ten years into the future they are seen as offering practical information. Other stories that look decades into the future often adopt a “Star Wars” approach. Such articles you almost want to dismiss as being good for magazine sales but little else. So, how do you sort through these hot jobs of the future articles to glean some nuggets of information? Let’s give it a try.

The most intriguing aspect of the future is that it is a contradiction for those trying to predict it. In some ways it is not as different as we imagine and in other ways it is far more different than we can ever anticipate. It’s interesting when looking at some of the predictions made by experts in 1950 about the state of the world in 2000. It was believed that we would see people commuting to work in flying cars; the controlling of weather; undersea colonies; disease-free lives; the end of world hunger; and robots taking care of all routine tasks.

On the surface you could say that the above predictions were a way off the mark. But in other ways, the fall out for people and jobs is not as misleading as you would expect. Sure, the types of tasks performed by people in these positions did not advance to the level expected, however the aptitude and interest of people pursuing these areas would have still been well served. Let’s look at the lofty projections about the future and see where people actually ended up working.

• People did not end up commuting to work in flying cars, but they did commute in cars for local employment and planes for business trips. The demand for automotive mechanics and aircraft maintenance engineers did not disappear.
• We never learned to control the weather. However, the knowledge of atmospheric scientists became more heavily relied on to counsel weather-sensitive industries.
• Undersea colonies remain a distant dream. Yet careers in marine biology that study plants and animals have thrived.
• Disease free-lives are still in the realm of science fiction. However, the numbers of individuals making their living in scientific and pharmaceutical research is huge.
• World hunger is still a stark reality. Yet there are many dedicated people working in underdeveloped countries to make progress. A couple of these positions include international aid workers and social policy makers.
• Robots have not taken care of all routine tasks (ie-making beds and washing floors has not disappeared) however the field of robotics engineering has had a major impact in industries that rely on complex automated systems and robotic devices.

Today as we look at articles that peer into the hot jobs of upcoming decades the major pieces of advice is to know that it is often more fiction than fact. However, , but rather concentrate on the employment trends and wider employment picture. Often this view gives you a good indication of the amount and type of education needed to work in the up and coming areas of tomorrow.

So, when it comes to understanding future occupations it is easy to side with Yogi Berra (a former baseball player known for his home-spun philosophy) when he said “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future”. However, when it comes to understanding the employment trends that effect major educational planning decisions for your career path we remain more optimistic than Yogi.

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