Jobs of 2033
Do you still do your job in the *exact* same way you did 10 years ago? Do you even do the same job you did 10 years ago?
Probably not…because work is always evolving.
Consider that 60% of today’s jobs didn’t even exist in 1940 according to an MIT Task Force on the future of work. The work force of 1950 didn’t see jobs like nutritionist, drone operator or social media manager on the horizon.
And some jobs may never exist again. For example, the alarm clock replaced the “knocker upper” (human alarm clock, not what we might think in today’s slang…)
So, with the pace AI evolving, what will jobs look like in 2030? Or even in 2025?
Nearly all jobs will be impacted at some level by AI but those that I’m predicting will rise (and/or appear - some of these aren’t quite real jobs yet!).
Product Management and UX: Shaping the go-to-market roadmap and strategy of a product, including how users interact with it.
AI tools shorten the time to build, so more products and product strategy (already critical!) will rise as competition for attention increases.
Workflow Automation and AI Enablement: build and automate workflows and/or look for spaces to integrate AI.
This expertise will become a job in and of itself. This expert will build unique, custom workflows that hack between systems. This won’t replace all out of the box SaaS solutions but will add a new “hack something ourselves” competitor.
Having doubts? Consider agile coaches, organizational development specialists and remote work experts whose careers are already built around helping other people work better.
Prompt Engineering: (definition from ChatGPT for fun) designing and refining prompts or instructions to achieve desired outputs from a language model or natural language processing system. It involves crafting specific instructions, queries, or context to elicit the desired response or behavior from the model.
If you ask 10 people to draw a square, you’ll get 8 different squares in response. But if you ask 10 people to draw a square that’s exactly one inch on each side and give them a ruler, the results will be much closer to what you wanted. Same goes for using an AI system - the quality of response is only as good as the quality of the input.
Change Management: Equip leaders and teams to handle change through expert coaching, detailed communication plans and facilitated process design.
As the pace of change accelerates, so does the fallout. Change experts won’t be reserved for Fortune 500 anymore.
Data Collection Specialists: New jobs around data collection will blend UX, data engineering and compliance.
These jobs won’t be focused on the advanced analysis of data science or the storage of a DBA but instead be a role shaped around how we collect data and when/how to get more of it.
Since AI systems are only powerful as their inputs, data earns an extra degree of importance. “Data is the new oil” has long been a refrain for a reason and we’ll only see this grow.
Mental Health & Healthcare Support : Not new at all! Nurses are heroes.
Mental health and healthcare facilities are woefully understaffed especially looking at an aging population.
AI might enable some of these roles but don’t underestimate the personal touch these roles require. Baby Boomers broadly hold quite a bit of wealth that they are likely to spend on care.
Coaching: Act as a sounding board and resource to help people get from where they are to where they want to be in a specific area for example health or finances.
Doulas, guides, mentors and coaches are not a new idea for humans. But their application and popularity has been growing and my bet is that it will only expand especially around specific spaces -- finances (not an investor for you but a money mindset coach), health including specifics like screen time management, dating and more.
Purveyors of Novelty: Jobs built purely around entertaining, surprising or delighting other people with novel experiences.
Entertainment as an industry is not new. But as we live more online, in person *experience* becomes a more premium novelty. These could range from hosting murder mystery parties, building escape rooms or bringing goats for yoga. There’s a reason malls are becoming amusement parks.
Artisan Crafting: Niche, specialized services usually around physical goods. like watch repair, polaroid camera film sales, fish tank install + maintenance.
With more climate awareness comes more skepticism about our disposable lifestyles. With that comes growing interest in repair over replacement. Some of these spaces are also high on nostalgia (something people LOVE during times of change) and come with a cool factor.
As mega-stores continue to wipe out smaller shops and product discovery remains a core e-commerce challenge, people will look for more ways to express themselves as individuals.
Relationship Building: People buy from people especially when you’re talking about B2B. (see: every startup who tried to build only self serve SaaS) So, success requires community management and business development.
As things get even noisier with AI generated content, the ability to cut through that noise in a personal, relationship driven way will increase in value. Experts in this space like CharismaQ are blending coaching with technology to help teams expand their skills in this area.
What am I missing? How might these impact Hiring Leverage?
