Careers With a Future

KATHERINE O'BRIEN, Staff Writer

Between globalization and technology, it's probably a pretty safe bet that the ever-shifting labour market will continue to change. So, it's a wise idea to keep informed about existing and upcoming employment trends before you plunk down time and money on a program. As Sunny Lam, the Shinobi Career Coach, puts it in his article, The Top 10 Tech Trends for 2011: watch the career landscape and "move as the wind moves."

Technology-Based Careers
Arguably, the most important trend to watch is technology as advances in this area can have a huge effect on occupations -- creating new jobs and rendering others obsolete. Several sources, including the U.K. article, Best Careers for the Future, believe that computer and information technology itself is one of the fastest growing areas of employment. "Next to health care, there's no industry with greater opportunity than technology," writes Alexis Grant in the U.S. News & World Report's Best Careers 2011. "There's an 'app' for everything these days, as technology plays an increasingly important role in consumers' daily lives."

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' (BLS) 2008-2018 employment projections, the data processing, hosting and related services industry is expected to grow by 53 percent and software processing is projected to grow by 30 per cent. Employment in computer systems design and related services is expected to increase by 45 percent.

The BLS predicts that network systems and data communications analysts will be the second fastest growing occupation in the U.S. economy. Demand will increase as organizations continue to upgrade their IT capacity and incorporate the newest technologies such as wireless networks. Computer applications software engineer jobs also are expected to grow rapidly from 2008 to 2018.

Closer to home, in Ontario, employment prospects for the following information technology (IT) jobs are seen as good until at least 2013:

• Information systems analysts(PDF)
• Software engineers(PDF)
• Computer and information systems managers (PDF)

New High-Tech Positions
Technology has created some new and interesting jobs in recent years, such as search engine optimization strategist. For this occupation, which is profiled in Money Watch's Five Brilliant Careers, you need to know how web pages are structured and how search engines examine those pages to calculate page ranks.

Another up-and-coming job is that of social media manager. "Depending on the organization, the job responsibilities of social media managers range from formulating high-level online strategies to updating Twitter feeds," says this So You Want to be a Social Media Manager? article.

In the Guardian's Jobs of the Future article, it's predicted that by 2020 technology will have advanced to the point that positions dealing with augmented reality will be needed. "[T]he Internet, video gaming and 3D TV [will] collide with the real world," creating a need for avatar design-security consultants, who will design, create and protect the "virtual you."

Green Jobs
Of course job expansion will occur in areas outside of technology. Although it's hard to see pollution, factory farming or clear cutting in a positive light, from a career-seeking point of view, damage to the environment means increased opportunities in the environmental field. The Best Careers 2011 article puts environmental science technician in its top 50 careers list. Other promising careers include meteorologist and hydrologist (profiled in our Whatever-the-Weather Careers article along with wind turbine technician.) This latter profession is featured in the Top 60 Jobs That Will Rock the Future. This particular article lists a number of other environmental jobs with career potential, such as sustainability officer and renewable energy technician.

The Top 60 Jobs article also points out that pollution has lead both to an increase in respiratory problems and to an extremely good job outlook for respiratory therapists, (one of the "hot" health care occupations profiled in our Seven Careers Around the Body article.)

Health Care
Speaking of health care, there are major career opportunities in this field. With our aging population and increasing life expectancies, the need for more health care will only grow. Even now there are shortages of such health care professionals as doctors and nurses. Currently, almost one third of the occupations listed on the Canadian Priority Occupation List (POL) -- a list of occupations deemed in demand by Citizenship and Immigration -- are in health care.

Health care roles that specifically involve caring for senior citizens, such as geriatric nurse, can be particularly good career choices for the right person. There are many other job opportunities in geriatric and gerontology, explored in our article, A Field With a Future.

The other advantage to working with senior citizens and/or in health care (likewise with the personal care industry) is that these jobs require working directly with people so they can't be done remotely or outsourced offshore. Five of the 18 jobs profiled in the Jobs That Will Never Be Outsourced article are in health care.

This article also features technician/mechanic jobs, such as diesel mechanic and HVAC (Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning) technician, as occupations where you have to install, maintain or repair things can't be done remotely.

Skilled Trades
When it comes to skilled trades in general, a labour shortage will likely occur in the near future, largely because of a predicted exodus of soon-to-be-retiring baby boomers. In this Metro article author Rafael Brusilow quotes George Gritziotis, executive director of the Construction Sector Council, who says that 170,000 skilled construction trades workers in Canada are expected to retire by 2017 and another 135,000 more workers will be in demand by then.

Jobs With a Less-Than-Stellar Future
It's also important to know what industries are or have the potential to be on the decline.

Despite the rosy forecasts for technical workers mentioned earlier, some positions, particularly in technical support (help desk) or computer programming, are seen as vulnerable to outsourcing. Ontario Job Futures points out that employment for computer programmers (PDF) is expected to grow more slowly than for other computer-related occupations because the programs can be transmitted digitally, meaning that the work can be done anywhere in the world.

Outsourcing has affected a wide variety of jobs, really any position where the services can be provided by workers who communicate via the telephone or online. A range of jobs are being farmed out, including those in advertising, editorial, chemistry and clean energy. In the article, More High-End American Jobs Being Outsourced to India a former U.S. newspaper executive, Pervez Sikora, notes that high-end work being done in India includes tax filing preparations, medical diagnoses, legal work and financial portfolio analysis.

The Disappearing Jobs: 10 High-Paying Careers with No Future, identified 10 job categories whose numbers are projected to shrink in the coming years plus a few that will grow slowly. Among the jobs included are newspaper reporter, (tied to an old technology, the newspaper industry has nearly gone belly up), travel agent and chemist. Insurance underwriter makes the list as well, given that new software programs make it easy for these professionals to take on much more work than in the past.

Finally, we've all read stories about manufacturers in North America, especially those in the auto industry, being hard hit by layoffs -- so it's probably safe to say that low-skilled manufacturing jobs are a poor bet if you’re looking for a long-term career. These jobs (machine operators, textile cutters, machine operators) are well-represented in the BLS's list of occupations with the fastest decline. And in Ontario, prospects are seen as limited for jobs like sewing machine operator (PDF) and motor vehicle assembler (PDF).

Never choose your profession solely on the basis of labour market predictions, but do keep the future in mind when you make your career decision. Having a job is no longer just about keeping a job but also about keeping up with the always-changing job market and evolving your career plan when it makes sense.