Wonolo
Anyone entering the working world – or thinking about what to major in in college – has probably considered whether their preferred profession has staying power. With technology advancements creating fear that some human-led positions may become obsolete in the future, it’s a legitimate concern for those just entering the workforce. Or, perhaps you’re considering making a career change and want to pursue a career with tremendous growth potential to secure your earning power for the next 10+ years.
To gain some insight into the up-and-coming or emerging jobs and career fields that offer the most potential in the coming years, we reached out to a panel of career experts, thought leaders, and business leaders and asked them to answer this question:
“Which job is the best for the next decade with the best growth potential (and why)?”
Meet Our Panel of Career Experts and Business Leaders:
Read on to learn what our experts had to say about the best jobs with the most growth potential over the next decade.
Grant van der Harst
Grant van der Harst is the Managing Director for Anglo Liners.
“One of the jobs which has the best growth potential over the next decade is…”
Content writing. More and more companies are beginning to see the value of content marketing, because not only does it help to engage your customers with your company better, but if done right, it has a lot of SEO value, too. Properly optimizing your content will help to improve your position on Google’s search rankings, which will increase traffic to your website and give you the opportunity to increase your sales as well. Now that more companies are realizing this, we are likely to see more job opportunities open up in this area, as companies seek to hire people who can optimize their content in a way that will improve their search rankings.
Alexander Lowry
Alexander Lowry is the Executive Director of the Master of Science in Financial Analysis program for Gordon College.
“I admit to being biased, but it’s a no-brainer…”
The answer is in financial services. I believe it so strongly I recently accepted this position at Gordon to lead their new masters in finance program.
Just look st how fintech has changed the industry landscape. Think about the possibilities blockchain offers. Consider how crypto currencies are going to upend the finance system. The examples go on and on.
There’s so much innovation going on in this industry. And it’s an industry the economy depends upon it. Finance cannot disappear or the economy grounds to a halt. It’s an easy question to answer.
Matt Edstrom
Matt Edstrom is the Head of Marketing for BioClarity.
“The job with the most growth potential in the next decade is…”
Virtual Reality. Considering our world is increasingly becoming more digital, a job working in the digital space will present a lot of opportunity within the next decade. There are many different avenues to pursue within the broad digital space, but if I had to choose the overall best job in terms of growth potential, it would be anything related to virtual reality (VR). VR has not yet taken the world by storm, per se, but it is certainly on the cusp of doing so. Once it does, having an understanding of VR and how to do it well will be an extremely good skill to have. It will change the way that marketing and advertising are being done, so if you can get a job working with VR now, you will be a powerful asset to any company within the next decade. Whether you are on the development side or are simply managing campaigns, working with VR in any capacity will yield plenty of opportunity to grow and thrive.
Deborah Sweeney
Deborah Sweeney is the CEO of MyCorporation. She is a business owner, an entrepreneur who was a former attorney practicing in the area of intellectual property and business law. She purchased her company out of a publicly traded company after running the division within the corporate environment for 5 years.
“I would say that best job for the next decade with the best growth potential is…”
A lawyer. I believe that lawyers have flexibility and options – they may not even practice law, but I have found my law degree to be extremely valuable in business. Being able to understand the law and the nuances can be beneficial in so many careers – writing, business, business development, product management, leadership, government, and corporate.
Tracy Julien
Tracy Julien is the VP of Marketing for GuidedChoice.
“In our day in age, technology has become a part of our daily lives, truly
ingrained in society….”
There are many lucrative opportunities for job growth in many industries, but as for marketing, a digital strategist will have the best growth potential. The digital strategist role will be someone who is fluent in new social and digital trends, specializes in a certain niche, and manipulates content successfully.
It is not new that social media and online marketing are key business and revenue generators. Not surprisingly then, those who possess the skill sets required, such as SEO and digital marketing knowledge, are highly in-demand and will continue to be. In the next decade, technology will only become more efficient and intricate, which will open up many more job opportunities in digital and social media marketing.
Robert McGuire
Robert McGuire is a Publisher at Nation1099.
“The number one job over the next decade is independent worker or freelancer…”
You may have heard that an enormous percentage of the workforce is freelance. Those freelance statistics usually include people in traditional jobs who freelance on the side, maybe a lot and maybe only once in the last year. In fact, full-time freelancers account for 11 percent of the U.S. workforce. That means that 1 in 9 of the people who left your company in the last couple of years are probably working independently now. That population has doubled in the last 10 years and the growth projections are 3.5 percent annually. Many people go freelance for lifestyle reasons – they don’t feel engaged at work; they want more flexibility; they want better work/life balance. But many find out that it can be a lucrative career choice. The average income of a full-time freelancer doing professional-skills work is $68,000, while the median household income is $58,000. And in surveys many independent workers say they experience more income security than they did in a traditional job.
Cristian Rennella
Cristian Rennella is the CEO & CoFounder of elMejorTrato.com.ar.
“After 9 years of work in the technological part of the company…”
I can assure you that the work with the greatest growth potential in the next decade is Artificial Intelligence Programmer / Designer.
The world started with the internet, then moved to mobile, and is now going to AI. That is where intelligence can help us all to be more efficient, from cars that are driving alone, to technology that translates different languages in an automated way, and listening devices like Alexa that respond to our needs (personal assistant).
That will definitely be the best job of the next decade!
Laura Hall
Laura Hall is a Marketing Executive at Shiply.com, an online marketplace like eBay but for moving goods and has helped over 1 million people save money on moving big and heavy items.
“It feels obvious that technology roles will have huge opportunities for growth…”
I believe anyone with early experience in technologies like AI, VR, and AR will soar very high very quickly. However, I also believe that there will be huge growth on the other end of the spectrum – in this world of automation there will be a demand for highly skilled craftspeople in industries that are often forgotten about, like tailors, musicians, and painters. I believe our desire for authenticity and ‘unplugging’ will grow as our technology does.
Jeff Winkler
Jeff created Origin Code Academy to help equip students with the skills necessary to start a new career in software development. He is passionate about helping students get a job after they graduate and he works directly with employers in San Diego to make that happen.
“A software programming job can put someone in the driver’s seat in nearly any industry over the next decade…”
Software is the backbone to everything from agriculture to zoo keeping, and there’s a code base that now touches virtually every department of a growing population of U.S. companies. As a result, the current demand for well-trained, quality developers is incredible, and all forecasts indicate that it’s going to continue to grow in many tech centers around the U.S. and abroad. A top software programmer can pursue any industry that truly interests them and still easily earn well over six figures. There’s not many other occupations that present this type of opportunity – now and in the coming future.
Kimberly Spencer
Kimberly Spencer is a certified NLP High Performance Coach, motivational speaker, and the founder of CrownYourself.com, helping female entrepreneurs stop self-sabotaging and start succeeding holistically in their bodies, businesses, and relationships. Her work has been featured on The CW, ESPN, and NPR, and in Heavy, Oxygen Magazine, and Girls Life Magazine.
“In the next decade, the best job will be…”
A high performance coach, communication coach, or success coach. People are starving for connection and communication. With social media, communication has become wider, but lacked depth, only skimming along the surface. In the next decade a new generation will be entering the workforce who have been raised with learning their language – English, Spanish, etc. – but not really knowing how to communicate, how to interact with people, how to engage and influence people with their words, and how to have the courage to deliver negative feedback in a way that serves. They will need to be trained, or else risk being fired. And companies will be putting in more money for personal development projects in order to train their employees in the necessary tools to grow as a team. In order to do that you have to have the clarity to communicate, the courage to do so, the influence to be able to persuade, and the energy to keep pressing forward.
Max Soni
Max Soni is founder and CEO of Delancy Street, a new startup transforming private lending.
“There’s a huge amount of interest in the crypto-coin industry…”
I’d say that there’s huge growth potential for genuine thought leaders who can come up with brilliant ways of using bitcoins/cryptocoins in innovative ways.
Scott Amyx
Scott Amyx is the author of Strive: How Doing the Things Most Uncomfortable Leads to Success, which has been endorsed by Tony Robbins, Forbes, Singularity University, Tribeca Film Festival, and other influencers.
“The job least likely to be displaced by AI, robotics, and automation will likely be…”
The PhD specialists that are creating, building, modeling, analyzing, and fine-tuning these systems. Almost every week, niche AI is mastering a use case specific area better than human experts. But these systems are needy – they need massive and continuous flow of data to train their neural networks, models and algorithms need to be tweaked and optimized, and to master new skills it requires expert AI scientists to develop these fragile, complex systems.
The human experts teaching the AI systems, on the other hand, could find themselves out of work by the very machines that they help teach, e.g., chess and go masters, RPA business analysts, etc.
Gregory Golinski
Gregory Golinski is the Digital Marketing Executive for YourParkingSpace.
“The job with the best growth potential in the next decade is…”
Pastry chef. French pastry chef, to be exact. Why French? Because French pastry is second to none, and no other country comes even close.
French pastry has become very popular in countries such as China, Japan, or Australia. If you can bake a good mille-feuille, baba au rhum, éclair or Paris-Brest, you’ll be in high demand and you will have the opportunity to travel around the world.
J. Kelly Hoey
J. Kelly Hoey is the Author of BUILD YOUR DREAM NETWORK: Forging Powerful Relationships In A Hyper-Connected World (2017/Tarcher Perigee).
“The job with the most growth potential in the next decade is…”
Project Manager. Innovation is what used to be called the R&D department. In the near term, as more companies assemble innovation departments internally (or lean heavily on incubator and accelerator programs in the startup ecosystem to guide this function for them), project manager job titles will become more and more commonplace (regardless of sector). In the longer term, the actual skill set of project manager: managing of budget, deadlines, deliverables, and outcomes, but most importantly, the effective management of a team (people), will be what employers are seeking most. No company can predict what goods or services will be in-demand in year, let alone a decade; however, what is becoming evident is that foundational components of the skill set for individual success (listening and communication skills, empathy, a.k.a. soft skills), are at the core of corporate success. The critical thinking person who can get along well with others and herd a diverse group of people through an obstacle course of competing demands to an unknowable end will have their pick of opportunities for the foreseeable future.
Jeff Neal
Jeff Neal owns and operates The Critter Depot.
“This suggestion may come out of left field…”
But for us, cricket farming is going to be the best job in the next decade.
We raise crickets and sell and ship them on our site, The Critter Depot.
Whether we’re facing a recession or a bull market, the facts are that people will continue needing crickets to feed their bearded dragons, leopard geckos, and other fish and reptiles. So no matter how hard it gets, people will always want pets to get them through thick and thin.
Katie Derrick
Katie Derrick is a Content Marketer for The London School of Make-Up.
“The job with the most growth potential in the next decade is…”
Copywriting – The unsung hero, the job that will continue to be relevant in years to come. Why? Because there is always going to be a need for content. After all, writing copy comes in so many different forms, such as email marketing copy, product descriptions, press release copy, and outreach journalist requests. Thus, there is an endless need now and in the future for content to be created for business, products, and services to thrive and stay relevant.
People are never going to stop reading or researching into a product or service; even if this is done through voice recognition, the available online content needs to be out there to receive a response.
Of course, technology is rapidly improving and changing, meaning voice search, video marketing, and virtual reality will play a big role in changing content, but that’s all it will do – change the way we use it and write it, not eliminate the need for it.
Tomas Ondrejka
Tomas is a co-founder at Kickresume which helped more 300 000 people worldwide to land their dream jobs. He authors in-depth guides, articles, and ebooks for job seekers to help them kick start their career. He likes mountains and snowboarding.
“If I told you it’s Software Developer, you probably wouldn’t be surprised at all…”
Everybody knows that. What most people don’t know, however, is that employment in healthcare is probably even hotter than tech right know. And with better outlook for the future, too.
Of course, healthcare jobs have always been quite lucrative. But what’s relatively new is that it’s no longer just high-profile professionals like surgeons or anesthesiologists who are in high demand. On the contrary. In the U.S., as well as the rest of the developed world, nursing and other low to mid-tier medical jobs are popping up faster than we’re able to train people to do them. And this trend shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.
Why? Let’s take registered nurses as an example. Most of the points below can be applied to other professions too.
First, an increasing number of nurses is reaching the age of retirement. One third of the current nursing force in the US will reach retirement age in the next 10 to 15 years.
Second reason also has a lot to do with demographics. The population is increasing in size while at the same time growing older in average. According to estimates, 88.5 million people in the US will be 65 or older. We need more health care professionals to take care of the aging population (in other words—us).
Third is automation. According to some of the more pessimistic estimates, as many as 375 million jobs worldwide will disappear due to automation by 2030. The only professions safe from this are the ones that require a level of human interaction—something that will take many years for computer algorithms to replicate.
Fourth, currently we’re unable to educate enough students for these professions. It’s not finding enough students, it’s being able to accept and educate all of the qualified students that apply for these programs. According to an AACN report from 2012, the US nursing schools had to turn 79,659 qualified applicants away due to limited capacity.
Fifth, nursing salaries are on the upswing. Since 2014, nursing salaries have increased by 2.6% per year. But how much do they actually get paid? RNs salaries in the US vary depending on the region and specialization but in 2015, a registered nurse would get the average gross salary of $79,000, compared with $95,000 for a clinical nurse and $102,000 for a nurse practitioner.
Sixth, many health care jobs don’t even require formal training. Medical aides, nursing assistants, secretaries, caregivers and others learn on the job.
And well, that’s it. Those are six pretty good reasons why to get a career in health care. You basically can’t go wrong with that decision.
Marcus Harjani
Marcus Harjani is the Co-Founder of FameMoose.
“Blockchain is something we hear a lot about these days, but for good reason…”
While there is a lot of hype, the underlying blockchain technology has a tremendous potential for integration into just about every industry. Some industries, like finance, are more suited to early adoption than others, but we are just now only seeing the tip of the iceberg of demand for blockchain domain expertise.
Those studying the landscape of jobs in the blockchain space describe an exponential growth in demand for candidates, with a 207% increase in jobs over the last year on Indeed.com. LinkedIn saw a 437% increase in blockchain related jobs from 2016-2017.
Bottom Line: Blockchain is on the rise and we are only starting to see growth. Blockchain developers and product managers will become increasingly valuable in the years to come.
Harrison Brady
Harrison Brady is a digital marketing specialist for Frontier Communications. His expertise and insights have been shared on sites such as Business News Daily, Monster, Glassdoor, Reader’s Digest, and Fast Company.
“Information Technology Specialists will be in high demand during the next decade and beyond…”
Advanced technology such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things continue to develop rapidly, and with that growth comes an increased need for IT specialists that can handle the transition. Experts are already worried about the “digital skills gap” – in Europe and America especially, youth are increasingly lacking in technical skills that will prepare them for the workforce, which means a good IT specialist will be that much more of a valuable asset. For more info on the digital skills gap, click here.
Ross Wehner
Ross Wehner is a former engineer and recruiter with a Fortune 100 Company turned tech career coach. He founded WehnerEd as a 21st Century approach to
career change to help users of all backgrounds quickly and affordably secure new careers in tech. WehnerEd’s resources enable you to succeed in today’s fast-paced digital world.
“To stay relevant and attract new customers…”
It’s a must for companies to manage a website, apps, and digital marketing presence, and increasing numbers are utilizing AI and smart algorithms to optimize products internal decision making. Any roles that help to build a company’s online presence, integrate technology into their products, or leverage data to optimize and grow profits are going to be the jobs with the most growth over the coming decade. Grocery stores use AI to send me personalized coupons and boost their sales. Sports teams are tracking player performance on the field to build optimal performance. Fashion and music industries are using code to analyze historical trends data to minimize risks and nearly guarantee hits with their audiences.
So then, it makes sense that the most in-demand jobs right now are the ones that help these companies complete their digital re-inventions. These roles include web developers, mobile app developers that create software for Android and iOS devices, software engineers, digital marketers, Data Analysts, Data Scientists, and artificial intelligence.
Eagan Heath
Eagan Heath is the Owner of Get Found Madison.
“I’m a big believer that digital marketing is where it’s at…”
And where it’s going to continue to be at. As more and more people spend more and more time online, digital marketing is going to be the way to reach them. Traditional marketing agencies are having trouble switching their mindsets and practices, so a new crop of digital-only agencies is emerging and taking over.
Our assisted living clients obviously serve the oldest demographic there is, and even within the senior age group, 2/3 are online, 4 in 10 have smartphones, and half are on social media. Those numbers will only increase as baby boomers age.
Josh Prigge
Josh Prigge is the CEO of Sustridge.
“A job that has been growing and will continue to see massive growth is the sustainability professional…”
We have seen enormous growth in this industry as businesses, higher education institutions and government have all been working to embed sustainable practices in their operations. Nearly every Fortune 500 company now has a sustainability department or team, and Green MBA and graduate programs in sustainability are popping up at universities around the world.
Our world is facing complex social and environmental problems which are interconnected and interdependent, and organizations of all types and sixes are understanding that they need to adopt more sustainable practices to help address these issues. Chief Sustainability Officers, directors, managers, and coordinators of sustainability are becoming more and more common in organizations across all sectors. As issues like climate change, environmental degradation, resource depletion, food and water shortages, and soil loss continue to worsen, the sustainability professional field will only continue to grow.
Sophie Miles
Sophie Miles is the CEO of QuotesAdvisor.com.
“The world has just become more complex, technology has influenced all aspects of our lives…”
In the next few years, jobs will be largely in interdisciplinary fields to respond to the increasingly complex demands of the market and industry.
The employment by excellence that responds to this demand is data scientists. Today we generate data very easily; every purchase, every product we consume, every message we receive and even every click we make generates a piece of information. We have a huge amount of data, but we do not know what to do with it. Data Science involves some enlargement of academic statistics and machine learning to face unusually difficult problems in many fields at the same time.
The core motivation for the expansion to Data Science is intellectual. In the next ten years, there may be great industrial demand for these skills; however, the core questions that drive the field are scientific, not industrial. Data Science will be the science of learning from data; study of methods involved in the analysis and processing of data and proposes technology to improve methods in an evidence-based manner.
Data Scientist has been titled the best work in the United States, with an average base salary of $ 110,000 and 4,524 job offers. As a person who has been in the business for many years, I have not seen such growth.
Glen Allsopp
Glen Allsopp is the Founder of a marketing company, Detailed.com.
“Without a doubt, the best field I would recommend people getting into is…”
Some form of programming or data analysis fields.
You only need to take a look at LinkedIn’s list of the most searched-for jobs to find people working with blockchain technology or ‘big data’ to see how popular these sectors currently are.
Then there’s the emergence of schools just training people in these fields so companies like Facebook and Google have more staff in the pipeline.
It’s hard to think technology isn’t going to become even more integral in the future.
Doug Abercrombie
Doug Abercrombie is the Senior Vice President and Chief Agency Officer of Combined Insurance, a Chubb company.
“The US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates…”
Employment of insurance sales agents overall will grow 10% by 2026. There are so many types of careers available in the insurance industry and so much potential for growth. Combined Insurance recognizes this, which is why we announced our plans to hire 3,000 more sales agents throughout the US by the end of 2018.
Michael Shearer
Michael Shearer is the VP of Marketing Operations at Effin Amazing.
“The job with most growth potential in the next decade is…”
Marketing Technologist. These versatile team members are proficient with tech and marketing fundamentals (copywriting, design, campaign planning/management, etc). They’ve become essential to most businesses, but the need is much higher than the supply right now. There is a growth in education and training to create more people who fit this profile.
Nate Masterson
Nate Masterson is the Marketing Manager for Maple Holistics, a company dedicated to all-natural and cruelty-free personal care. He specializes in SEO campaigns and brand building initiatives.
“The jobs with the most growth potential over the next decade are…”
Occupational Therapist
Nowadays people are living longer and life expectancy is trending upwards on a regular basis. This is thanks in large part to better health education, global infrastructure improvements, and advances in healthcare across the board. However, this does present something of a catch-22. While people live longer lives, this also elongates the amount of time in which they are likely to need bodily maintenance and medial care. That’s where Occupational Therapy, or OT, comes into play.
OTs are more in-demand than ever due to the nature of people living longer and longer – there is more and more need for physical therapy, rehabilitation, and regular care. The demand for OTs will only grow as life expectancy continues to heighten, which makes it a totally bullet-proof career choice with immense growth potential.
SEO Marketer
The search engine is our gateway into the internet, which makes it something of a gateway into the world. And while Google’s algorithm and those like it will continue to become more sophisticated, the need for specialists who can help businesses achieve greater visibility in search engines will never wane.
We are tending towards an e-commerce-based shopping preference on a global level, which means that more and more consumers will turn to the internet to make purchasing decisions and to discover new brands. It is imperative that brands implement a strong SEO strategy in order to out-rank their competitors on Google, Amazon, and the like. So while blackhat SEO tactics and exploits may be a thing of the past, SEO is only becoming more and more valuable as e-commerce becomes more and more utilized.
![[Report] Beyond the Gig: Exploring Reliable Work Options for the Modern Workforce](https://info.wonolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Worker-Preferences-Report-Header-Image-500x383.png)
