The Top Skills & Jobs for 2022 - 2025
As we begin a new year and continue our way through the great resignation, many of us are looking to upskill or reskill to enter a job that fulfills our needs and brings us joy. As much as I am a fan of following one's passion, passion alone may not be enough. We must find a job that:
We are good at
We love
The world needs
We can be paid for
Which I find is best described in the Japanese philosophy of Ikigai.
For business leaders, understanding what skills and jobs are rising is essential as you look to hire, but more importantly look to evolve your business. Too often reskilling and upskill is not part of the strategic plan which is a big miss when you look to evolve your business process and implement new technology. Training and upskilling should not be an afterthought, but instead should come before technology so that you don’t get taken advantage of by vendors, consulting firms, and most importantly so you can create and foster the talent to innovate and grow. Therefore, understanding the skills and jobs that are increasing in demand isn’t just useful for job seekers, but also business leaders.
First, let's look at the top 15 skills for 2025.
Future of Jobs Survey 2020, World Economic Forum.
What we can see from this graph is a balance between right brain and left brain thinking - creativity, and critical thinking. Even the top skill, analytical thinking and innovation is a combination of left brain (analytical thinking) and right brain (innovation). As we dive deeper into the skills we can see a strong growth for technical skills but also emotional intelligence, resilience, and leadership.
When we group these skills into job titles, there are a few clear winners.
Future of Jobs Survey 2020, World Economic Forum.
What we find with the top three jobs is that they all relate to the top skill of analytical thinking and innovations and are grouped into the data science job family. Coming at #4, digital marketing and strategy specialist, correlates back our top skills of creativity and originality. In summary, we are seeing an increasing demand for technical roles such as cyber security, data science, robotics, fintech, and digital transformation, but what I find interesting is that there seems to be an equal amount of importance on creative and management roles such as project managers, strategic advisors, and organizational development specialists.
On the contrary, in the decreasing demand jobs we find a common theme with face-to-face roles, manual roles, and data entry.
Future of Jobs Survey 2020, World Economic Forum.
For business leaders, looking at the areas of decreasing demand is an opportunity to look at your business to find opportunities to automate, or reduce headcount due to an increase in automated tasks.
In conclusion, if you are looking to make a job change or debating majors as you enter college, it’s helpful to understand what skills and roles are rising (what you have the highest likelihood to get paid for and the world needs) and to take the time to do some self analysis to better understand what you are naturally good at and love.
Stay curious and happy learning!