While it may be cliche among business people to say ‘Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been,’ sayings become cliches for a reason. Even if cliches like these ring true, they are still hard to follow. How can we predict where the puck is going to be?
Being in the staffing industry we see so many companies talking about being in business for decades and offering services from construction to mining to medical. These companies have been around for so long that they have developed the ability to rapidly react to changing demand. However, with data we can now predict and be proactive instead of reactive to where the puck is going. To see this, we need to know what the jobs of the future are. These are the jobs that didn’t exist a few years ago, but will likely take the world by storm in the next 2 years. In this article we will look at what are the jobs and clusters that will create the most new jobs in the next 2–3 years, resulting in the highest demand for staffing companies.
While robots are replacing humans in mundane and mechanical jobs, millions of new jobs will be created for fulfilling people’s potential and aspirations.
The World Economy Forum’s ‘Jobs of Tomorrow’ report maps these new professions of tomorrow and the skills required to be successful in these professions. Seven of the biggest clusters that will create the most new jobs are: Data & AI, Engineering & Cloud Computing, People & Culture, Product Development, Sales/Marketing & Content, Care Economy, Green Economy.
By the end of the next 2 years, these seven clusters will contribute to 6% of the global workforce. Most of these jobs did not exist 5–10 years ago. Staffing companies will be eyeing this new opportunity. In 2020 alone we expect to see 1.7 million new jobs in these clusters and a total of 6 million new jobs will be created in the next 2 years.
Staffing Opportunities
Two clusters present the biggest opportunity for staffing companies: Care Economy and Data & AI. Let's analyze these two a bit further:
As we can see from the chart, Data & AI require specialized knowledge and a high level of vetting. This presents a big opportunity for Direct Hire for Staffing companies or Pre-Vetted Platforms like TopTal and InterviewJets.
The Care Economy, on the other hand, is more suited for temporary staffing. It has easily standardized job types (the emerging job types within the Care Economy are only a dozen or so, this makes it much more manageable to standardization and building of rubrics to evaluate for each job type.) and typically utilizes short term, flexible placements. On-demand staffing models thrive on these types of jobs.
And that’s not even mentioning that the Care Economy is where the most potential opportunity is because it will add the highest amount of new jobs. 4 times the number of jobs than Data & AI. For every 10,000 new opportunities, Data & AI will contribute about 40 of those new jobs. The Care Economy, on the other hand, will contribute 160 new jobs. The highest amongst the seven clusters.
Care Economy & Temporary Staffing
With higher volume and lower(as compared to Data & AI) median wage in the care economy it will present a big opportunity for on-demand staffing platforms and apps to make the service available at scale.
With the increased volume, temporary staffing companies will find it challenging to scale up their operations while keeping the costs low if they stick to a traditional approach. In order to meet this growing demand and fully take advantage of this opportunity, temporary staffing companies will need to change their approach and embrace an on-demand model. Only by utilizing the automation and autonomous self-service functions that on-demand platforms offer will temporary staffing companies be able to keep up with the demand without seeing their costs skyrocket.
Care Economy Jobs
The 12 key emerging job types for the Care Economy given the World economic forum report will be:
Today with platforms like Wolf, it is much easier to launch an Uber Works like On-demand staffing platform for any industry. The big challenge for the staffing companies is going to be training and sourcing qualified manpower for the industry. A likely route for staffing companies would be to either partner up with a training school or offer online training for the skills required.
Unlike Data & AI, the Care Economy already has a huge experienced workforce. The Care Economy is not as new as Data & AI and this means that it currently employs more people than Data & AI. Though, proportionally speaking, from the base rate, Data & AI will grow more than the Care Economy. Example: Data & AI add 40 new jobs to the already existing 100 Data & AI jobs, a growth of 40%. While the Care Economy adds 160 new jobs to an already existing 800 care jobs, a growth of only 20%.
Even with half the growth, the Care Economy will hire 8 times more people than Data & AI. Out of all the new jobs created among these emerging clusters, a whopping 37% of new jobs will be created within the Care Economy.
Where the puck is going
This is where the puck is going and why temporary staffing executives are already (and those who aren’t, should be) looking for new ways to capture the care market. Investors should be flocking to companies launching their own on-demand care platforms. This market is ripe for an on-demand staffing solution. New AI and Data developments maybe are the most eye-catching, but it’s ultimately not the robots that have the biggest potential for temporary staffing. It’s the people. The time is right for the care and the human side to shine.