Imagining Employment of the Future

The Canadian Scholarship Trust (CST), a nonprofit educational organization, recently paired up with international design firm Idea Couture to create a job fair of the future. The collaborators considered a number of change drivers; i.e., climate change and energy, technology, aging demographics, immigration and a borderless world, etc., to imagine the employment opportunities that might be at a job fair in 2030. At the Assembly we looked at some of the jobs CST and Idea Couture imagined, and I share those ideas below.

__________________________________

A Robot Counselor

A robot counselor would observe how a family interacts and identifies their needs, so that they can make wise decisions about the types of robot assistants they might need. Post-placement, a robot counselor would be on hand to provide solutions and alternatives for a robot that is not fitting in or is causing discord in the home.

A rewilder’s job will be to bring things back to a state of balance and functionality in places where human activity has degraded the natural environment.

Human beings have created a lot of trash in the short time that most of the planet’s population has lived in an industrial mode. Much of that trash is valuable as an energy source as well as for the metals, recyclable plastics, and other materials it contains. A garbage designer will make the most of the world’s trash.

A simplicity expert will study organizations and the people who work in them to look for ways to achieve alignment between goals of both. The idea is to create efficiency so that organizations operate well and people are satisfied in their work.

Advancements in battery and photovoltaic cell technologies will continue to happen at a faster pace, making harnessing the energy of the sun a very real and widespread industry by 2030. Solar technology experts will enjoy careers ranging from solar farmers to urban solar planners.

These are just a few of the jobs envisioned in this project! You can see more at CST’s Inspired Minds Careers 2030 website. At Assembly, I invited students in their classes this week to dream up their own jobs of the future and to add to the list. I also encouraged them to think about the fact that 2030 is just sixteen years away. Our eighth graders will be well into their careers and our kindergartners will just be finishing college. It is a good exercise for them to think about what jobs will exist at that point and what skills they will need to be successful in those careers.

As I look at these futuristic jobs, I also believe that academics will be more important than ever. Math, science, and technology will obviously be critical, but communication and presentation skills will be equally important. So will cultural understanding, empathy, and ethics. Understanding what people need, devising solutions to make their lives better and that are in balance with our natural environment, and communicating and collaborating to create and implement those solutions will be the most needed in the jobs of 2030, just as they are today.

As we sat in silence, I left attendees with this thought from one of my favorite thinkers and writers from the past, President Abraham Lincoln. He said these words during a time of incredible uncertainty in people’s lives, and he helped to shift people’s thinking in monumental and positive ways.

The best way to predict the future is to create it.
                                               --President Abraham Lincoln

Together at SCDS, we help to create the future that we hope to see.

Brad Weaver, Ed.D
Head of School