Unveiling the Fastest Growing Careers

Introduction

In today’s career landscape, demand reigns supreme.

The global labor market is experiencing an unprecedented shortage of skilled workers, creating a fertile ground for ambitious professionals seeking disproportionate returns compared to previous generations.

By strategically aligning with demand and venturing into fields, sectors, or industries witnessing exponential growth in job openings, you can not only secure larger salaries, but you can also accelerate your path to promotion.

In a nutshell: it’s easier to get hired, paid more, and promoted faster in a fast-growing field.

Let’s delve into it…

Definition of Fastest Growing Careers

Fastest growing careers are professions experiencing a rapid increase in job opportunities and demand within a specified timeframe (The World Economic Forum uses a 10 year cycle, but with the advent of AI, we believe this timeframe has shrunk to 5 and perhaps even 3 years).

What makes a fast growing career useful is that these careers typically outpace the hiring ability of companies, presenting lucrative prospects for ambitious professionals. What employees experience as a fast-growing career, is the employer experiencing a skilled labor shortage.

Why Fast Growing Careers Matter

In the face of a fast growing career (or a labor shortage as the employers experience it), employers find themselves in a unique predicament. The scarcity of skilled workers exerts pressure on employers to:

• Raise wages
• Adjust hiring standards (usually loosening them)
• Consider candidates who lacking direct experience
• Invest significantly in training new employees

This shift places the onus on employers to invest in human capital development. As a result, you can stand to benefit from increased opportunities for advancement, skill development, and competitive compensation packages, all at the employer’s expense!

Please keep in mind that this type of growth is not part of our natural economic cycle. This type of disruptive growth is typically caused by technological advancements, demographic shifts, market demands, and regulatory changes. Geographical location also plays a pivotal role – growth experience for a job in one country doesn’t necessarily mean the same growth will occur everywhere around the world.

Fastest Growing Careers in the USA

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 15 fastest growing careers are listed below:

(We’ve eliminated jobs that pay less than $60,000 per year as well as jobs that don’t relate to our students. You can visit bls.gov at the link above to get the full picture)

Analysis:

Investment in renewables is driving growth in jobs related to renewable energy supply. Healthcare demand is increasing due to an aging population. Data, statistics and software demand is increasing due to AI and the maturation of the Internet. These are well established and agreed upon facts about our market.

Increase in actuaries, however is of unusual interest, and is actually attributed to actuaries leaving the profession into more attractive jobs such as those in data science. This is particularly noteworthy: There will be cascading effects emerging from these fast growing careers – other jobs not on this list will also grow, as people leave them into faster growing fields.

Another View of Fastest Growing Careers in the USA

While the table above presents an overview of the entire economy, it does not fully capture great job opportunities available to you, especially for white-collar professionals, high-value professionals or executives.

To give you a more comprehensive view, we reviewed a number of reports online, including some by CNBC, Indeed and Forbes. We removed any entries that contradicted with the data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The following table represents another view of the fastest growing careers in the USA.

Analysis:

We see an increase in positions related to online businesses, remote work, as well as shifting corporate cultures. Green initiatives and social initiatives are creating positions that did not exist before, and as such could be considered “fast growing”. But this should be taken with a grain of salt, as the longevity of these positions and their sustained growth is not proven.

How To Orient Toward a Fast Growing Career

Many professionals claim that it’s hard to find a good job, while many companies complain about a shortage of qualified candidates. This seeming contradiction can be attributed to the skills gap – an HR term describing the mismatch between the skills employers need and those possessed by job seekers.

In short: There are a lot of great jobs available, but the population lacks the skills to perform them.

Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting out, transitioning into a fast-growing career requires addressing this skills gap. This is because, on top of your transferable skills and talents you developed through your current work experience, you also need to check a few additional boxes. You must demonstrate additional competencies around specific skills employers are looking for – if you cannot demonstrate these skills, as far as the employer is concerned, you fall into the skills-gap.

Here’s how you can develop new skills and address the skills-gap in order to transition into a fast growing career, regardless of your connections or pedigree:

1. Hard Skills: Develop in-demand hard skills through university education or modern certifications. Platforms like Grow with Google Certificates offer practical, industry-relevant certifications to enhance your skill set. More often than not, simple actions you take toward developing hard skills can be used to demonstrate to employers that you are willing to learn and that you are engaged in continuous learning. That can be more than enough to get your foot in the door. (Keep in mind that certain regulated careers may require specific credentials, certifications or exams.)
2. Soft Skills: Enhance your interpersonal skills, known as soft skills, to become more effective professionally. Numerous online resources provide opportunities to develop these skills. We also recommend that you use your network and work with your mentor to develop soft skills. If you don’t know where to start, you can always attend one of our events.
3. Career Skills: Your job skills (hard skills and soft skills) allow you to do the job. Your career skills, on the other hand, allow you to get the job. Beyond job-specific skills, focus on career skills that help you secure desirable positions. From networking and resume writing to negotiation techniques, these skills can be trained and refined. Investing in these skills should be a top priority, as they pave the way for better career outcomes. This is because, a lot of hard and soft skills can be developed on the job, if you know how to get that job in the first place. For comprehensive guidance, check out Launch Your Career.

By addressing the skills gap and prioritizing skill development, you can position yourself for success in today’s competitive job market, regardless of your current career stage.

Most In-Demand Jobs in the Future

What about the future?

Will these fast-growing careers continue to grow in the coming years or even decades?

Or has this growth already completed, and orienting towards any one of these careers could turn into a losing battle?

While it’s impossible to predict the future perfectly, we do know quite a lot about the state of our economy as well as the job market. Technological, demographic, and geopolitical shifts that impact our careers are well known and understood.

Here’s the bottom line: The demand for the functions of these careers isn’t going to go away. How that demand gets fulfilled, however, is going to be massively disrupted by Artificial Intelligence as well as de-globalization.

In other words, the jobs will mostly remain, but how those jobs are performed will mutate through the years to come.

For example, if you were to become a doctor, rather than going through PubMed databases to lookup studies about a particular diagnosis, you’d instead talk to some “iDoctor Diagnosely” AI system to find the information you need – significantly decreasing the time and effort involved in doing your job.

Of course, this can result in your hours being cut, or even some jobs disappearing because fewer doctors can do the same work. But just as the patients won’t disappear, the need for ”doctoring”, whatever form that takes, will remain with us for a while longer.

Yes, it will be more competitive. And yes, we’ve been preparing for it…

All other factors being equal, since every job on the planet is going to be disrupted by AI and de-globalization, the fast growing careers listed above still present unique and valuable opportunities.