Professions that will disappear and those that will be in demand

Jobs in demand that will never disappear

Afraid that you might be out of a job in the near future, thanks to robots and artificial intelligence? Don’t panic – there are certain professions that will never disappear, and we talked about them in this article. If you find your specialty on the list, you can relax.

Art

All creative professions will remain relevant occupations for decades to come. We could say “forever,” but there have already been attempts to robotize the arts, and who knows how persistent efforts will end.

In 2013, researchers from Oxford published a study on the impact of computerization on today’s professions. Based on that study, they created a website with the telling title “Will robots take my job?” where you can find out the likelihood that a machine will replace you at work. Creative people have a low probability percentage:

  • 0.4% for choreographers;
  • 1.8% for architects;
  • 2.1%, fashion designers;
  • 2.2% – interior designers;
  • 2.2% – filmmakers;
  • 4.2% – painters and sculptors;
  • 8.2% – graphic designers;
  • 13% – dancers.

Art is impossible without the human factor, because a robot is alien to feelings and inspiration – it acts on the basis of preset programs. You can create robot dancers and teach them to perform movements just like humans, but you can’t give them expression and the talent to invent new dance genres. You can teach robots to sew clothes, but you can’t teach them to create designer things that change the world, like Coco Chanel’s little black dress.

As long as your job consists of generating ideas, creativity, and intellectual labor, you can rest easy – you are the lucky owner of a relevant profession on the labor market. The value of such professions will only increase.

Professional sports

The list of professions that will never disappear also includes fitness trainers and professional athletes. Japan has already created a robot that scores three-pointers better than humans, but the question is another: will robot competitions be of interest to human spectators?

And would it make sense for robots to compete if they were equal in strength. It is the overcoming of human capabilities, competitive spirit and unpredictable results that make sports a favorite hobby for millions of people. And athletes are owners of a profession that will never disappear.

Fitness trainers can also sleep peacefully. Yes, robots can be trained to assess people’s fitness and create fitness programs, but they won’t be able to motivate clients with their fitness and inspire them. A robot will be able to say “yes, before I couldn’t do push-ups either and weighed 40 kg more, but I did it and you can do it”, but no one will believe him 🙂

Medicine

The same Oxford University study showed that medical professions will always be needed. Robots will not replace doctors, social workers, psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses and other specialists involved in treating and helping people. The main reasons medical professionals are indispensable are the need to make decisions in unpredictable situations and to show emotional contact. Doctors must be able to communicate properly with sick people, make difficult decisions without full information about the patient, and understand human psychology.

The list of current professions in medicine includes therapists, pediatricians, gynecologists, dentists and ophthalmologists. These specialists are now the most in demand in Russia.

Education

Robots make excellent teachers: they can remember more information than humans, they never get tired, they don’t respond to jokes and are completely unbiased – machines don’t have “pet peeves”. But there is a “but” – a robot teacher has no emotional intelligence and empathy.

Personal qualities are very important to the teacher. Many people choose their USE exams and future profession thanks to a teacher who has made a student fall in love with his or her subject – biology, math or chemistry. A robot does not evoke an emotional connection with people, it cannot inspire with its example – it is just a machine. But conservative teachers will have a hard time in the future, because schools and universities are already adopting modern ways of teaching: interactive whiteboards, electronic diaries, notebooks instead of textbooks. To stay on the wave, you’ll have to adjust.

Marketing

Internet marketing has a lot of tools based on artificial intelligence – analytics, chat-bots, content search. But robots cannot yet replace marketers themselves. In marketing, you constantly have to be creative and come up with new ways and methods to get results, and the machine can only act on the schemes you already know.

Artificial Intelligence is already being used to write articles, but it is a data collector, not an editor. A robot will select the necessary data from a ton of numbers, prepare statistics, but it cannot write a catchy text or an analytical report. So internet marketers and everyone involved in the creative side of digital are the owners of the current professions that will be needed in the coming years.

HR

Recruiters are also on the list of relevant professions. In recent years, several large Russian companies have introduced robots in the process of hiring candidates: Rostelecom, M.Video and PepsiCo have assigned Vera the robot to call candidates and conduct the initial interview. But the companies did not fire recruiters because HR has many responsibilities in addition to interviewing that machines cannot handle: adaptation, training, employee development.

Beginning recruiters need to learn not only how to make calls and talk to people, but also how to understand HR analytics, methods of increasing motivation, time management, presentation skills and visual psychodiagnostics, so as not to lose their position to a robot. In general, to grow and constantly evolve.

IT

Programmers, robotics, developers, testers, data scientist and other IT professions will always be in the list of actual professions – thanks to progress. A robot in the future will be able to create one of its own and train it, but only if it has already written algorithms and pre-defined programs. In addition, robots need to be fixed, controlled and trained.

Without IT specialists you cannot develop: you have to create robots for HR, educational applications and systems for universities and schools, tools for doctors. There is a lot of work, and there always will be.

In the first place, professions whose functionality is more effectively transferred to digital services are at risk.

Pharmacists

The pharmacy employee, who today can be asked for “something for a sore throat,” will in the future give up his job to a robot. In one clinic in San Francisco, it is already possible to get medicine from a special machine: the machine reads the prescription from the doctor, packs the right doses of medication and gives them to the patient. The robot does all this dozens of times faster than a human and without interruption.

It seems that in the future vending machines will be able to buy not only lenses, but also pills and mixtures.

Fitness Trainers

During the lockdown, when fitness clubs were closed, many people started using online workouts on mobile apps. Broadcasts gather many more participants online than the gym can accommodate, and attendees don’t have to go anywhere: Turn on a class and go – “feet shoulder width apart, deep breaths.” Fitness trainers are expected to change their functionality significantly in the near future.

Travel Agent

Today it is faster, easier, more convenient and often more profitable to book a hotel, an apartment, tickets or excursion services through online travel services, than to go to a travel agency. In the future, travel agents are likely to deal only with the organization of premium travel for tourists who are willing to pay for exclusive tours, personalized attention and excellent service.

Cashier

Self-service terminals, where shoppers can pay for purchases themselves, are already operating in many supermarkets. During the pandemic, many people have become accustomed to food and grocery delivery services with which they don’t even have to go to the store. All this leads to the fact that the profession of cashier is gradually becoming unnecessary.
Bank employees. This category of workers includes: loan officers, operators, consultants. Most of their functions are performed by banking applications.

Dispatchers .

We order cabs, trucking and carsharing services through mobile applications, and the need for dispatchers in such services is eliminated.

Drivers

It is predicted that in about 15 years the United States will be using unmanned cars as cabs. Public transport, trains, excavators, and heavy trucks are next in line. Thus, the profession of driver and machinist may also become almost extinct.

Sales associates

Store employees, who today are ready to help us with size selection or advise which product is better, will soon be replaced by chat-bots in applications or robots directly in the salesroom. They are expected to greet customers, show products and respond to customer emotions.

Financial employees

Brokers and traders will most likely be replaced by computers: the productivity of machines is much higher than that of humans. Already 40% of decisions to buy or sell stocks on the U.S. stock exchange are made by artificial intelligence.