IT jobs will grow by 22% through 2020. The world stage is set for a technology boom and India is one of the leaders of the troupe. To stay on top of the game, job-seekers must train themselves and take charge of technology-fuelled roles. Roles like product managers, app developers, data analysts, digital marketers, etc, are some domains that are capturing the imagination of businesses.
Companies expect that data analysts will help them make sense of, and derive insights from, the torrent of data generated by technological disruptions. Essentially, data analysis is the discovery and communication of meaningful patterns in data. Demand for analysts increased by almost 90% by the end of 2014, within a year. In India, the analytics and business intelligence industry together is sized around 10 billion and is expected to grow by 22%, to 26.9 billion, by 2017. The use of big data will underpin new waves of productivity growth and consumer surplus. It will become a key basis of competition and growth for individual firms and whole industries.
In many countries and industries, the most in-demand occupations did not exist five or 10 years ago. It is estimated that 65% of children entering school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don’t yet exist. Maybe it will be difficult for school children to imagine what they want to grow up and do or what they will actually end up working as, but think about the opportunities that confront the Millennials and Generation Z. If you can imagine a technology today or a specific function you would like performed for you, or have an idea that fills a demand gap in any market, chances are there exist multiple avenues for it to materialise.
Additionally, software start-ups in India are going to create 80,000 jobs by the following year itself. With the rate at which technology is acting as an enabler, who knows, soon Star Wars fans could see lightsabers and landspeeders become a reality!
So jobs that seem to be at risk may be like molecules—splitting further and creating more jobs, but just of a different kind. Instead of worrying about unemployment, those entering the workforce need to keep one finger on the pulse of evolving technology, and invest in training themselves to acquire new skill sets. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is underway.
