With increasing concerns about everything from generative AI to the looming climate crisis to the cost of living crisis, the future of jobs is becoming more uncertain. The last decade of rapid technological innovation, dubbed the “Fourth Industrial Revolution,” has dramatically transformed the workplace, creating new job types, integrating new technologies into daily job tasks, increasing the use of online platforms, and more. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated these changes by forcing the adoption of technology on businesses that had been slow to do so previously, as well as vastly increasing the proportion of workers who work at least partly online or from home. These changes are not going to slow down. Rather, as articles about ChatGPT stealing jobs are quick to note, the workplace is only going to be further transformed as my generation — Generation Z — enters the labor market. So what can the workers of the future expect about the future of work? And what skills will GenZ workers need to succeed?
The Institute for the Future predicts that 85% of jobs that will exist in 2030 have yet to be created. These changes are already starting to impact the job market: the World Economic Forum (WEF) predicts that 23% of today’s jobs will be replaced or become obsolete over the next five years. For many GenZ workers, these predictions are daunting: they cannot look to the current labor market to envision their future careers. However, predictions about the kinds of jobs that are expected to grow in the coming years can tell us more. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Outlook Handbook, two of the jobs with the most significant growth in the next 10 years are computer and information systems managers and information security analysts, demonstrating the increasing importance of future workers to be able to interact with and cope with the problems of new technologies.
With this restructuring of the job market, future GenZ workers will be faced with the challenge of preparing for jobs for which the training does not yet exist – namely, education in readily transferable skills. Yet, current education models continue to direct students’ time and attention to the “what” of learning rather than the “how". The discrepancy between how we learn now and the requirements of the upcoming job market will prove to be problematic in the future. Indeed, employers already anticipate that 44% of workers' skills will be need to be replaced or applied differently in the next 5 years, according to the WEF. The skills of increasing importance to employers emphasize creative and analytical thinking, preparing workers to fill roles that even the most advanced technologies cannot. Complex and inventive problem-solving will become central to work of all kinds, in addition to job-specific skills. Adaptability will also become more important as technologies continue to emerge and change after GenZ enters the job market. GenZ workers will have to engage in lifelong learning to continue to be employable in a changing job market.
Further, generative AI will undoubtedly affect GenZ in ways we may not be able to predict right now. AI has already begun and will continue to be a driving force for job creation and displacement. While it is difficult to fully predict the effects of AI on the labor market, early estimates suggest that nearly 1 in 5 workers will have at least half their tasks replaced by AI. Administrative jobs like clerks and secretaries will face extreme job losses, for example. Job displacement due to AI-driven automation has already forced workers in sectors such as manufacturing into lower paying jobs, exacerbating income inequality. The question of accessibility to training that will provide GenZ workers with an ever-changing skill set will emerge as an increasingly pressing issue as the next generation enters the workforce. It will require solutions and innovation involving both wide-scale organization and broad financial support, as well as political backing.
However, GenZ’s hands are not tied as we head into this complex future. Indeed, the only way to sidestep the potential pitfalls that the rapidly changing workplace presents hinges on future workers organizing, and building the collective power necessary to advocate for access to education and training. Unions, in particular, can play a key role in ensuring workers have access to training. As a Trade Union Advisory Committee paper argues, unions should act as a bridge between workers and employers in identifying training opportunities and skills gaps. Through collective bargaining, GenZ workers can also win protections against job displacement and wage erosion due to digitization. The importance of unions in job security has been evidenced countless times, a protection which will be increasingly necessary with the technological volatility of the work environment. New technologies, and AI in particular, offer exciting opportunities to ease the burden on members of the workforce, yet these advantages will never be seen if worker organization does not demand an optimization of these benefits across society, not just concentrated on the select few.
The good news is that workers and worker organizations are already coming together to confront the changes to the workplace driven by advances in technology. The Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) and Writers Guild of America (WGA) are already facing the issues posed by AI use in the entertainment industry head on in their negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. AI’s threats of job displacement compounds years of unfair compensation driven by the rise of streaming, where performers and writers are earning only a fraction of what they previously earned through cable and broadcast TV reruns. In addition to protections for the creative role that actors and writers contribute, the SAG-AFTRA is also demanding using the strikes to demand privacy and consent rights for AI uses of workers’ images. Through their strikes, the two unions have brought production to a halt in order to demand fair pay and protections from the misuse of new technologies.
GenZ’s remarkable support for unions and worker organizing hints at a future of similar union action for worker’s rights. Indeed, the eldest members of the generation, now in their early twenties, have already demonstrated an unusual resilience in their attempts to unionize by contrast to other generations. GenZ working for companies like Starbucks and Amazon, which are notoriously anti-union, have made headway in the difficult fight for worker power. The oncoming changes of new technology will require only more worker organization if GenZ is to succeed.
The world faces an uncertain future as it grapples with the introduction of powerful new technologies and a long list of global issues surrounding the workplace. For GenZ, these issues will have particularly profound effects. Most importantly, the changes in technology and the job market underline the necessity of young people learning how to learn, which can only be achieved through future workers’ collaboration, organization, and insistence on their education.
