Parenting Checklist

Jobs of the Future: What to Look At Instead of Guessing

The Findmykids Editorial Team

05/11/2026

4 minutes of reading

The Findmykids Editorial Team

A team of over 50 psychologists, educators, and doctors from around the world creating expert content for parents.

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Every year corporations publish yet another “atlas of professions of the future” with complicated titles like “neuromarketer” or “ESG transformation manager.” Still, it remains completely unclear where to steer a child and what to prepare them for. Sign them up for bionics classes? Pay for a technical college? Teach them to vibe code and stream? Let’s figure it out together.

💡 In short: there will be plenty of work, but the requirements are changing. What matters more than a specific profession is what a person can do beyond the basic set.

What will happen to jobs

The World Economic Forum (WEF) report on the future of jobs paints a fairly calm picture. Here is what employers around the world expect by 2030:

🧠 New jobs: about 170 million (14% of today’s employment)

Jobs that disappear: about 92 million (8%)

Net result: there will be 78 million more jobs, or about 7%. The labor market as a whole is not shrinking but growing. But the new jobs will appear in different places from where the old ones disappear, so many people will have to learn something new.

Professions have always changed. In 2026, MIT economists led by David Autor analyzed US census data for 2011–2023 and found that about 18% of Americans work in jobs that did not exist before 1970. Perhaps our anxiety comes not from a real shrinking of the job market, but from the fact that we have become better informed on the subject.

Is the future in agriculture?

In the WEF report, demand is growing fastest for big data specialists, fintech engineers, AI and machine learning specialists, and software developers. Next come security specialists, environmental engineers and renewable energy engineers.

But by the number of new jobs, agriculture leads: plus 35 million. Among the leaders are also delivery drivers, construction workers, nurses, social workers, counselors and teachers.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics forecast for 2025–2035 names these as the fastest-growing occupations:

nurse practitioners: plus 41%;
solar panel installers: plus 36.5%;
data scientists: plus 34.6%;
wind turbine technicians: plus 29.5%;
healthcare managers: plus 24.2%.

Routine office roles are shrinking fastest. In the WEF report these are cashiers, executive assistants and secretaries, printing workers, accountants and auditors. By the number of jobs lost, clerks and secretaries lead.

What’s in demand in Russia

Among the most in-demand professions today are engineers, IT specialists, medical workers, AI and machine learning specialists, cybersecurity experts, financial analysts, marketers, logistics managers, psychologists, as well as skilled trades: lathe operators, milling machine operators, welders and electricians.

💡 A curious detail: high demand doesn’t mean high pay. In Russia, occupational safety engineers are in demand but earn noticeably less than mid-level developers: 80,000 to 100,000 rubles versus 150,000 to 200,000.

Comparing data for Russia and the US, you can see four trends.

Working with data and AI. These specialists are needed almost everywhere, not just in IT.
Caring for people. Medicine, psychology, social work, education. Routine tasks here are being automated, but nothing replaces a real person at someone’s side.
Physical work combined with mental work. Engineers, electricians, installers, technicians. Robots still struggle with unpredictable environments.
Hybrid skills. A person who knows both their own field and tools like AI is valued noticeably higher.

It’s not a specific profession that matters, but skills

Stanford researchers looked at which US occupations feel the impact of AI most. It turned out to be jobs involving programming, customer support and other office work, where there are many standard tasks with text and numbers. The least affected is work that needs hands and live presence, for example, nurses and nursing aides.

In the first group, young professionals aged 22 to 25 were hit hardest. As of June 2026, their employment was about 19% lower than it would have been had it kept pace with peers in occupations that AI has barely reached. A year earlier, that figure was around 15%. For those who have worked in the same occupations for a long time, the situation is stable.

💡 It turns out that AI, for now, more often takes not someone’s whole job but the first rung of the career ladder: the simple tasks on which beginners used to gain experience.

Hence a practical takeaway for people just starting out is that it’s important to be able to do something beyond the basic set, for example, manage processes, build a work schedule and make sure everyone meets deadlines. Employers value proactivity and, of course, resilience under stress.

💡 An important caveat. This is data for the US. The authors themselves call it a description of the picture, not proof that AI is to blame.

What parents can do

Don’t choose a profession for your child and don’t try to guess what will be in demand in 2040.
Look at skills that are useful in any profession: learning, thinking critically, reaching agreements, understanding data and tools.
Show different professions. Visits to workplaces, conversations with friends who have unusual jobs, projects to dive into.
Don’t downplay skilled trades. In Russian and global lists, they stand right next to IT.

🧠 Your child doesn’t need to guess the profession of 2040. They need to know how to learn, think, reach agreements and not be afraid of new tools.

Sources

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