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New types of jobs means new potential for workers at all levels, especially for those looking to change careers. Overall, job growth in the next decade is expected to outstrip growth during the previous decade, creating 11.5 million jobs by 2026, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Even further, it’s estimated that 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately hold jobs that don’t yet exist.
To help find those up-and-coming roles and to better understand what skills are needed to succeed, we analyzed LinkedIn data from the last five years, as well as some survey data, to identify which jobs and skills are on the rise, what they’re replacing, and what these trends indicate about the jobs market in the years to come.
Here’s what we found:
- Tech is king: Jobs with the top growth potential are tech-focused, with demand coming from tech and non-tech companies alike. Machine learning engineer, data scientist, and big data engineers rank among the top emerging jobs -- with companies in a wide range of industries seeking those skills.
- Soft skills matter: Not all of the emerging tech jobs require technical skills. Sales development representative, customer success manager, and brand partner rank among the top emerging jobs at companies where a technical background is not a necessity. Traditional soft skills like communication and management underpin all of these emerging jobs.
- Jobs with high mobility on the rise: Several top emerging jobs reflect broader societal trends, such as wellness, flexibility and location mobility. More people are getting healthy which could explain why barre instructor featured among our emerging jobs. Not quite as surprising, licensed realtors ranked highly as the post-Great Recession recovery of the real estate market rolls forward. Just in the past year, the number of licensed realtors has surged 40 percent. These type of roles tend to be more widely distributed across U.S. regions.
- Low supply of talent for top jobs: Data scientist roles have grown over 650 percent since 2012, but currently 35,000 people in the US have data science skills, while hundreds of companies are hiring for those roles - even those you may not expect in sectors like retail and finance - supply of candidates for these roles cannot keep up with demand.
- Future-proofing skills is critical: Some of these emerging skills didn’t even exist five years ago, and many professionals are not confident their current skill set will be relevant within the next 1-2 years.
The explosion of tech roles over the past five years comes as no surprise given the impact of technology in every sector. Our November Workforce Report noted that hiring is up nearly 10% in the hardware industry, and nearly 15% in the software industry from October 2016.
- Specifically, the growth and widespread application of more sophisticated technology - like artificial intelligence - we are seeing more specialized machine learning and data-specific roles top the list of emerging jobs. These jobs are also widely available outside the technology industry.
- The number of customer experience roles that made the list indicates that the “age of the customer” was more than jargon. These jobs are among some of the non-automatable jobs on the market today, and the skills associated with them aren’t necessarily taught in university, as they rely heavily on soft skills.
- Comprehensive sets of skills that cover multiple disciplines are seemingly in higher demand. Many of the roles on this list cover multiple disciplines and are applicable to multiple industries.
- Certain specialist roles are on the decline. From specialized developer roles, to legal specialists, and even specialized logistics roles, we are seeing these roles be replaced in favor of more comprehensive skill sets and job titles. For example, Flash-related roles are on the decline as the technology loses steam in favor of more big data and machine learning roles.
- In analyzing the career path of professionals who hold one of the top 5 emerging jobs, there was a common thread throughout: software engineers are feeding into all of the technology-related professions.
- Sales Development Representatives, while growing rapidly, is still an entry-level role and a great option for those looking to break into any industry. In fact, this is one of the most popular roles for recent graduates.
Machine Learning Engineer
1. Software Engineer
2. Research Assistant
3. Teaching Assistant
4. Data Scientist
5. System Engineer
1. Software Engineer
2. Research Assistant
3. Teaching Assistant
4. Data Scientist
5. System Engineer
Data Scientist
1. Research Assistant
2. Teaching Assistant
3. Software Engineer
4. Data Scientist
5. Business Analyst...
Methodology: The results of this analysis represent the world seen through the lens of LinkedIn data. As such, it is influenced by how members choose to use the site, which can vary based on professional, social, and regional culture, as well as overall site availability and accessibility. These variances were not accounted for in the analysis.
We looked at all members who list dated work experience on their profile and grouped the millions of unique, user-inputted job titles based on common job roles (which have many permutations). For example, the “machine learning engineer” job title includes user inputted titles such as “machine learning software engineer” and “machine learning engineer II.” We then counted the frequencies of job titles that were held in 2012 and compared the results to job titles that were held in 2017. “Emerging jobs” refers to the job titles that saw the largest growth in frequency over that 5 year period.
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Source: LinkedIn Economic Graph Team
