Which jobs are trending and which are disappearing? Which skills are becoming more in-demand and which will soon be out-of-date?
These are the questions that many students, job seekers and employers are asking, and a recent report by Burning Glass Technologies and Boston Consulting Group (BCG) provides the answers.
“A vibrant economy and, by extension, a healthy society depends on having an adequate supply of qualified workers to meet current and future demand,” the authors wrote. “Both the economy and society depend on ensuring that individuals are prepared for the future and remain employable.”
Together, the researchers gathered and analyzed 95 million online job listings in the United States from 2015 through 2018. From there, they were able to identify which jobs and skills are trending in the U.S. labor market.
This report is the most extensive of its kind.
“No other job market study to date has been as statistically extensive or exhaustive,” co-author Rainer Strack, managing director and senior partner at BCG, said in a statement. “We not only looked at the size and growth of demand over a three-year period, but we also pinpointed the jobs and skills that experienced the fastest growth from 2017 to 2018.”
Because the authors of the report analyzed so many different types of jobs, they had to break them down by categories.
Flagship jobs
The first category is “flagship jobs.” These are currently some of the most common jobs in the United States, receiving between 10,000 to 1 million listings each year. And demand for workers to fill these jobs is still growing, by up to 20 percent annually.
To make things easier to digest, the authors also separated the jobs based on groupings used by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).
Among the flagship jobs that fit the DOL’s “business” job grouping, listings for managers, secretaries and administrative assistants, customer service reps, human resources specialists and sales reps all experienced more than a 10-percent growth in online listings between 2015 and 2018.
Of the flagship positions that fit the DOL’s “digital” job grouping, positions in computer user support, application software development, IT security, systems analysis and database administration saw the biggest increase in demand.
Of the flagship jobs in the DOL’s “science, engineering and manufacturing” group, listings for civil engineers, technicians and production workers all saw a double-digit increase.
In “construction and transportation,” the flagship jobs that were experiencing the fastest growth in demand were building inspectors and electricians.
And of the flagship jobs in “health care,” there was an evident growing demand for medical assistants, pharmacy technicians, occupational therapists and nurses.
Additionally, over the three-year timespan, the authors noticed a significant increase in the demand for teachers, human services assistants and even hairdressers.
“Not all low-tech jobs are fated to fade away,” they wrote.
Fast-growing jobs
The second category is “fast-growing jobs.” These jobs are also receiving between 10,000 to 1 million listings each year, but they’re growing even faster than “flagship jobs” — by more than 20 percent each year.
Of the “business” jobs that fit this category, real estate agents, hotel clerks and interviewers experienced the highest percentage growth in job listings. This is “evidence that new technologies don’t necessarily replace jobs but instead often spur industry growth and job creation,” according to the authors.
“The fields within this grouping all show a strong trend toward automation and disintermediation: consider the use of online videos and websites such as Zillow in real estate, the lodging sites Airbnb and Vrbo in travel and hospitality, and the use of robo-interviews and the digitalization of many processes in human resources,” they wrote. “The aforementioned jobs are in demand despite these technological advances.”
In the “digital” grouping, the only jobs that showed a growth of 20 percent or more are computer and information research scientists. But, the authors explained, this is because “digital jobs have become much more specialized in recent years.” For example, companies are no longer looking to hire general software developers. They are looking for those who specialize in a specific language, such as Java or Python.
In “science, engineering and manufacturing,” the authors saw a growth of more than 20 percent in listings for computer-controlled machine tool operators, which they explained, “reflects the impact of newer technologies.” Additionally, they saw growth in demand for people to work more traditional manufacturing jobs, including system assemblers and machine operators.
In “construction and transportation,” the authors saw an increase of more than 20 percent in demand for painters and packagers, industrial truck and tractor operators, light truck and delivery drivers, and taxi drivers and chauffeurs. The increase in demand for truck drivers really struck the authors, given the predictions that autonomous driving may wipe them out altogether. In the future, that is still predicted to be true. But as of now, there is a huge shortage of them.
In “health care,” the fastest growing jobs spanned across nearly every discipline, from professional specialists like anesthesiologists to massage therapists and even medical equipment preparers and dental hygienists.
Many of the jobs in “personal services, social services and education” also saw a significant increase in demand, specifically in positions as personal-care aides, animal caretakers and childcare workers. “Overall economic growth, an aging population, and longer workdays are contributing to the accelerating growth of these occupations,” the authors wrote.
And lastly, positions as janitors and cleaners, dishwashers and waiters were some of the most common and fastest growing jobs in the report.
High-growth jobs
The third category is “high-growth” jobs. These are jobs that still have less than 10,000 annual online listings (a relatively small amount) but are growing at an extremely high rate. Between 2015 and 2018, listings for jobs in this category grew by an average of more than 40 percent.
“High-growth jobs are a beacon of longer-term economic trends,” the authors wrote.
And perhaps not that surprisingly, the “high-growth” category is full of tech jobs.
Between 2015 and 2018, the authors explained, online job listings for senior cloud engineers and Microsoft Azure developers grew by more than 70 percent each year. Jobs listings for Jira administrators grew by 50 percent, on average, each of those years. The same growth was seen in postings for cybersecurity engineers.
And perhaps surprisingly, the authors also saw a significant increase in demand for onboard specialists and talent coordinators. The number of listings for these jobs rose more than 50 percent, on average, over the time period.
Declining jobs
The authors also observed some jobs declining in demand, mostly because they are already being replaced by automation and other technologies. These jobs include telemarketers, office machine operators, loan interviewers, computer operators, tellers and administrative support workers.
Technology is reshaping the skills job seekers need
Notably, most of the individual skills for which demand grew fastest over the three-year study were tied to advances in technology.
For example, demand for people skilled in quantum computing, digital currency and the Natural Language Toolkit each grew by more than 100 percent each year from 2015 to 2018. And due to the emergence of many new technologies, demand for skills in chatbots, Amazon Alexa, data lakes and cloud security all grew by more than 40 percent each year.
“Technology is creating new skills and those skills are reshaping the broader job market,” co-author Matt Sigelman, CEO of Burning Glass Technologies, said in a statement. “Skills like machine learning and data visualization are now showing up across the board in a range of listings for roles such as marketing managers and business intelligence analysts, not just in the rarified domain of tech pioneers.”
