The coronavirus pandemic has been a turning point for the labor market. What trends should employers and job seekers take into account, and what to expect in the future – in the Trends material
The pandemic has provided an opportunity to rethink how we organize work and what we value as employees and employers. After it, many will continue to save heavily and plan their retirement differently, as well as move to employers with better health insurance programs and flexible working hours. What other trends can be expected on the horizon of the next 30 years?
Short term trends: 2021-2030
The largest online job search platform Glassdoor has published the trends of 2021:
- The offices will remain empty. Companies benefit significantly from lower real estate costs and the ability to hire employees without being tied to a location. Flexible working hours are an inexpensive way to retain employees who need to care for children or elderly parents. After the pandemic, 70% of Glassdoor employees want to have a hybrid employment – remotely with an office visit as needed.
- Racial Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is a recruitment trend that has grown even faster thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement and will intensify in 2021.
- Revision of the salary of remote workers. Millions of people have moved to the regions, because in order to work from home, you do not need to continue to rent expensive housing in the capital. This changes the competitive environment and wages. For example, IT developers moving out of San Francisco and New York will face a -5% to -30% salary adjustment depending on where they are moving.
- The brand office is no longer the basis of corporate culture. The design, look and feel of a solid headquarters have lost their relevance during the pandemic. Corporate culture is no longer associated with the office. Employees’ online job reviews have begun to play a major role in the employer’s HR brand. Companies that use employee sentiment data as business intelligence will do well in 2021. Three factors now matter most to employee satisfaction, none of which are office-specific: a compelling company mission, transparent decisions by empathic leaders, and a clear, understandable career path. And the most important bonus to the salary is health insurance.
- Many professions will become unclaimed. Glassdoor data shows that in the US in 2020, the supply of vacancies in the areas of service, education, administrative office positions, roles in trade and the field of “postponed” healthcare has “dipped” the most. There was no demand for such specialties as an otolaryngologist, ophthalmologist, event manager, cook, stylist, and even a university professor.
Milana Dzhidzhoeva, owner and CEO of the HR company Soter, St. Petersburg:
“Our analysis shows that last year vacancies in fintech, tourism, and entertainment sank to the maximum — up to 20% by 2019. The pandemic has greatly changed the demand for competencies – we need those who can manage change, quickly transform business and select the best technologies for this. This trend will continue for at least another year.
Another trend is the demand for communication skills in all areas: interaction with partners, customers, employees. For example, the number of vacancies for a PR director, although it has fallen, is not as strong as in the last crisis – their number decreased by only 7% during the pandemic, while the fall in 2015 was 20%. The requirements for a specialist include the creation of an ecosystem of multiple channels of interaction.”
Denis Barinov, Head of Kaspersky Academy, Kaspersky Lab JSC, Moscow:
“In the field of digital security and related areas, on the horizon of five to ten years, a segment of bioengineers specializing in testing and ensuring the security of implantable devices is likely to form. For example, a specialist in testing implantable components (biohacker), a specialist in neurointerface security, a cybersecurity biotechnologist. As a joint study by Kaspersky Lab and the Functional Neurosurgery Group at Oxford University has shown, the new field of high-tech medicine is already vulnerable to cyber threats due to the peculiarities of the operation of the stimulating devices themselves and the software used on them.
There will be a growing demand for professionals who can develop algorithms for regular verification of decisions made by artificial intelligence, as well as systems for correcting or suspending the execution of algorithms. In other words, cyberethicists will be needed to help ensure the correct operation of unmanned vehicles and other devices that involve machine learning, computer vision and other similar technologies.
Finally, people will be needed to protect the digital identity of a person. The profession of “personal security consultant” has already been included in the “Atlas of new professions”. Given the growing number of leaks and the value of user data on the black market, such a profession will be increasingly in demand. Only at the end of last year, we found out how much information about a person is valued today on the black market: for example, selfies with documents such as passports or driver’s licenses are in demand (up to $40-60 per document), information from a bank card (up to $20) , as well as accounts on entertainment or streaming services such as Netflix, Twitch or Pornhub (up to $8 per account).”
Medium-term trends: 2030-2050
HR specialist and talent strategist Shannon Gaydos, as part of his information project The 2050 Project, points out four trends that (apart from technology development) will affect the near future of the labor market:
Evgeny Vinogradov, Deputy Head of the Atlas of Emerging Jobs project, Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO:
“We are increasingly moving towards a complete fusion of work, leisure and learning. In a couple of decades, we can expect that the concept of lifelong learning – lifelong learning – will finally win. At the same time, you will have to study outside the production, on practical tasks, since the level of junior, novice specialists, is already being absorbed by machines – back in the summer of 2020, a program was created that independently writes the code of other programs from comments. That is, a person, having completed training and starting work tasks, must be qualified at least at the level that now corresponds to a fairly experienced specialist – middle, which inevitably leads us to the fact that non-automated professions that help this very continuous learning will be more and more in demand. — mentors, tutors, game practitioners, and so on.
In addition, in the next 20-30 years, some analogue of the world will already appear, even if not necessarily with VR glasses, from the book “Ready Player One”, inside which a person will be able to move between work, where he will do something in office applications, recreation, where he can have fun in online cinemas, games or in the Clubhouse, and a large family physically scattered across different cities and countries. And all this he will do, constantly learning new things, if he wants to stay afloat.
Pavel Luksha, professor of practice at the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO, expert at the SKOLKOVO Education Transformation Center (SEDeC). Founder of the Global Education Futures initiative:
“On the horizon of ten or more years, the Russian economy in competitive (primarily consumer) sectors is waiting for a “big restructuring”. Digitalization and automation are conditions for the competitive survival of companies, but they do not mean that only robots will work hard. On the contrary, the role of people in such an economy is only increasing – along with this, the requirements for workers are also increasing. We are expected:
- human-centered economy. Shift in consumption patterns: from a consumer product to a consumer experience, including “participation”, attention to the emotional state of customers and workers who interact with them. In the experience economy, the most important value is building and maintaining relationships (with customers and communities).
- Transition from staff to talent. The time of “mass uniqueness”: unique skills and creativity as the main source of value creation, attention to the development of talent (including people’s own motivation) as the main reserve of labor productivity.
- “The Economics of Tracking”. The behavior of employees and consumers in the digital environment is becoming “transparent” for organizations. This can lead both to manipulation and dictatorship, and to the expansion of opportunities for implementation.
- Continuing education as the norm.
- Team Economy: The greatest value is created by “played” teams that can solve problems effectively. The formats of “education” of teams and team hunting are developing more and more. In the education of children and adults, more and more attention is paid to communication and cooperation skills.
Long-term trends: 2035-2050
In an article on artificial intelligence in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the authors predict that, in addition to automation, AI will succeed in creating some kind of modified creatures. Robotics and such beings, tailored to our needs, will be used on a massive scale for the jobs that are currently being done by humans.
Long-term trends are also associated with the transition of countries to the stage of the AI economy. According to scientists, artificial intelligence technology can exacerbate the inequality of people around the world.
Thus, venture investor Alexander Perez Casares believes that society is already being divided into three categories:
Thanks to the market system, innovators like Elon Musk, Travis Kalanick and others will be able to capture the bulk of the wealth generated by innovative technologies, including artificial intelligence, which will allow them to become even richer. Consumers, that is, society as a whole, will benefit from increased productivity and reduced costs of goods. But people whose work is automated will face unemployment. The “technologically unemployed” will lose their ability to generate income, which will create even more inequality in a society where total incomes are increasing.
The long-term solution to inequality will lie not only in, for example, taxation, but also in the creation of an appropriate education system and the morale of people for lifelong learning.