From therapists to ’demortifiers’: Colm O'Regan predicts the jobs of the future

PREDICTING the future is a mug’s game. In fact, we don’t know if there’ll even be mugs. Whatever happens, over the coming decades, billions of people will arrive on planet Earth — and they’ll have to be given something to do to occupy their time. This has happened many times before. 

The miners and weavers and farmers have been replaced by data-entry technicians, marketing assistants, and people who work in ‘something to do with computers’. But the march of time is relentless and change is inevitable.

Familiar roles will still survive. There will always be room for lawyers, politicians, tax collectors, sex- workers, consultants and ‘humorous’ columnists. Like cockroaches, they will survive any cataclysm and emerge blinking into the light. Different, but stronger. If none of these rock your hoverboat, then imagine what other skills we’ll need in future.