Tasks change before jobs do
Automation rarely deletes an occupation in one stroke. It removes tasks, usually the routine and predictable ones, and leaves the rest of the job to reorganize around what remains. Bookkeepers stopped adding columns and started interpreting them. When you evaluate a field, list what its people actually do all day and sort the tasks into two piles: work that follows a rule, and work that requires judgment, persuasion, physical dexterity in unpredictable settings, or responsibility for an outcome. A career weighted toward the second pile tends to bend instead of break.
How to check a field
Opinions about the future of work are cheap, so start with data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a free Occupational Outlook Handbook that gives, for hundreds of occupations, the median pay, the usual entry education, the number of jobs, and a ten-year growth projection. Read it for the field you want and for two neighboring ones. Then look for these signs of durability.
- The work is tied to needs that do not go away, such as health, housing, energy, food, law and money.
- Many different kinds of employers hire for it, so that one industry's bad decade is not yours.
- There is a visible ladder, with senior people doing something different from what juniors do.
- People in their fifties are still working in it and are not all trying to leave.
Skills that travel
Build a deep specialty on top of a broad base. The specialty gets you hired, and the base lets you move when the specialty fades. The base skills are unglamorous and consistent across fields: clear writing, comfort with numbers, speaking to a room, running a project to a deadline, managing people, and selling an idea to someone who controls a budget. A specific software tool has a useful life of perhaps five to ten years. The ability to learn the next one quickly lasts your whole career.
Fragile positions
Be wary of expertise that exists inside a single employer, a single product or a single regulation. Be equally wary of choosing a field only because it is hot this year, since a rush of entrants tends to arrive just as demand levels off. Interest still matters. Thirty years is a long time to be good at something you find dull, and people rarely stay good at what bores them.
Tip Every couple of years, read ten job postings for the role one level above yours. The skills that keep appearing and that you lack are your curriculum.
