Which jobs will grow in the next few years?

As Generative AI has taken off, the question often emerges: Which jobs exactly are going to disappear, and which are going to grow?

While nobody can answer that for certain, it’s likely that – just as spreadsheets didn’t kill off accountants (there are many, many more of them today) – AI may well create more digital jobs than it displaces.

The World Economic Forum recently carried out a survey of 803 companies, representing 11.3 million employees. One of the key charts tucked within the report is info on those employers’ perceptions about which jobs will grow, and which jobs will shrink, in the coming years.

Here’s the chart (the more blue in each column, the higher the number of newly created jobs; the further to the right the white dot is, the more ‘net growth’ (ie, more jobs created than lost).

In the chart above, we’ve noted with a dot where those roles are explicitly ‘digital jobs’. In other words, of the top 40 growth jobs over the coming years, roughly 20 are digital jobs. In fact, of the top 10 jobs listed, 8 are digital jobs, and of the top 20, 14 are digital jobs. 

If you carry out the same process on the right hand column (where many jobs are net declining), 

you see two or three declining digital jobs (‘Social Media Strategist’, for example), but – in the main – they are non-digital roles.

While it’s always worth taking things like this with a pinch of salt, and predictions from hiring managers are often wrong, a prediction from 803 employers representing more than 11 million employees that 8/10 highest growth roles are in digital jobs is obviously positive.

Here are the 14 jobs which, from the top 20 growth jobs, the WEF predicts will gain further traction.

Those are:

1. AI and Machine Learning Specialists
2. Business Intelligence Analysts
3. Information Security Analysts
4. Fintech Engineers
5. Data Analysts And Scientists
6. Big Data Specialists
7. Digital Transformation Specialists
8. Blockchain Developers
9. Ecommerce Specialists
10. Data Engineers
11. Devops Engineers
12. Database Architects
13. Process Automation Specialists
14. Software and Application Developers