The economy is facing times of change, especially in the industrial sector, where multidisciplinary and dynamic teams are gaining strength to face processes related to cybersecurity, ecological transition, automation, database management and robotics. How are jobs in the sector going to change? Here we take a look at the professional profiles of the future for the industry.
Green economy already generates more jobs than fossil fuels
Such is the need to decarbonise the industry that, for the first time, the green economy employs more professionals than fossil fuels, whose oil leases are at their lowest level in 20 years. Deals have fallen dramatically over the course of this year, with only 21 leasing rounds completed globally, half of those in the first eight months of 2021.
Green jobs now account for 56% of the energy sector, an exponential growth from 2019 where the figures were evenly split. Looking ahead, the number of jobs related to the energy transition is expected to continue to grow to at least 13 million new jobs by 2030.
IT infrastructure
All these changes are leading to new trends in the demand for professionals. Increasingly, the industry needs to respond to questions about information technology (IT) infrastructure, understanding this architecture as that which brings together traditional, cloud and hyper-converged infrastructure to solve problems of storage, security and process automation.
Within this organisation, the profile of a professional specialised in automation and robotics stands out, in charge of transforming industry into productive, competitive and quality systems through technologies such as robotics or artificial intelligence.
So much so that STEM professions are in a position of ‘zero unemployment‘, because there is not enough supply to cover all the positions needed. Moreover, in Spain alone, more than 1,250,000 jobs linked to these profiles are expected to be created over the next five years.
Artificial intelligence and employability
The implementation of artificial intelligence is having a great impact on industrial companies and more specifically on those where repetitive tasks predominate, allowing this infrastructure to eliminate unnecessary processes, costs and wasted time.
In the face of its many advantages, there are also challenges: between 30% and 40% of the processes that are executed within a company can be automated by robots. This implies a structural change and a reorganisation of work.
It is not that robots will steal our jobs, but that humans will have to do more and more tasks that robots cannot do, especially those related to creativity, emotional intelligence, strategic decisions, flexibility and empathy. And let us not forget that artificial intelligence learns from the food we humans give it, behind each AI there is always a team of professionals who create the algorithm, which is why profiles such as mathematicians, even associated with philosophy or ethics, will gain more and more weight in the programming of artificial intelligences in all areas.
The ‘zero-unemployment’ professions
With all the expected changes and the future towards which industry is moving, driven by digitalisation that is advancing by leaps and bounds, certain professionals will be assured of a relevant role in the industry of the future.
- Jobs related to the circular economy, ecological transition and green economy
- Jobs related to automation and robotics
- Jobs related to cloud computing, programming and databases.
Alongside these, human resources experts say that jobs associated with creativity and strategic planning, human relations and semi-skilled jobs will be difficult for machines and robots to replace.