What profession or job will most be in demand

[StatGuy2000]

Main Question or Discussion Point

Hello everyone.

What I would like to do is ask the wider Physics Forums community what you would think is a profession or job is most in demand as we speak in 2012. Please don't restrict yourself to technical positions or a science/technology positions -- I'm thinking of any job out there.

I would also like to as the wider Physics Forums community what you would anticipate to be a profession or job that would be most in demand within the next 5 years. Now I fully understand the pitfalls of speculating on future demand, and any such speculation is likely to be inaccurate, but I would nonetheless like to hear any speculation or guesses coming from the community.

 

[chiro]

Hey StatGuy2000.

In terms of technical positions, we have tonnes of data and not enough people to help make sense of it. This lends itself to statisticians.

The other thing to think about is if the economy (I'm assuming US) continues to get worse: even in times of despair, opportunities arise. If things get bad, then some occupations will be better considered than others.

Ultimately to answer a question like that, you want to see what the trends are and make up your own mind. Gerald Celente is a guy that's been doing this for a long time, and has a magazine devoted to this kind of analysis.

http://www.trendsresearch.com/index.php

You make up your own mind of course, but ultimately the answer to your question will be for you to decide what the real trends are and then to think about the opportunities and put your money with your mouth is when you're ready.

It's really hard to know what is going to happen and lots of people will tell you a lot of BS especially for this kind of question (people run businesses devoted to giving this kind of advice, and the good ones can charge quite a lot), so ultimately the best advice I can give to you is to start paying attention to what is going on.

Read widely, listen to people that you may not normally listen to, and pay attention to what all different kinds of people with different experience and expertise have to say even if they are odds with one another (which you can guarantee, they will be at some point: nothing at all wrong with that).

After a while, you can make up your own mind based on what you are seeing happen around you yourself and what people are saying.

Just remember as well that sometimes the important information is not always the one that initially makes the most sense: typically the opportunities are going to be the ones that require a different kind of outlook and the capacity to consider it even at the smallest level no matter how strange it might seem initially.

 

[StatGuy2000]

Hey StatGuy2000.

In terms of technical positions, we have tonnes of data and not enough people to help make sense of it. This lends itself to statisticians.

The other thing to think about is if the economy (I'm assuming US) continues to get worse: even in times of despair, opportunities arise. If things get bad, then some occupations will be better considered than others.

Ultimately to answer a question like that, you want to see what the trends are and make up your own mind. Gerald Celente is a guy that's been doing this for a long time, and has a magazine devoted to this kind of analysis.

http://www.trendsresearch.com/index.php

You make up your own mind of course, but ultimately the answer to your question will be for you to decide what the real trends are and then to think about the opportunities and put your money with your mouth is when you're ready.

It's really hard to know what is going to happen and lots of people will tell you a lot of BS especially for this kind of question (people run businesses devoted to giving this kind of advice, and the good ones can charge quite a lot), so ultimately the best advice I can give to you is to start paying attention to what is going on.

Read widely, listen to people that you may not normally listen to, and pay attention to what all different kinds of people with different experience and expertise have to say even if they are odds with one another (which you can guarantee, they will be at some point: nothing at all wrong with that).

After a while, you can make up your own mind based on what you are seeing happen around you yourself and what people are saying.

Just remember as well that sometimes the important information is not always the one that initially makes the most sense: typically the opportunities are going to be the ones that require a different kind of outlook and the capacity to consider it even at the smallest level no matter how strange it might seem initially.

Thank you for your insights (please note that I posed this question out of curiosity rather than out of professional interest).

On a side note, I had a chance to check out the link on Gerald Celeste, and frankly I am skeptical of his actual abilities on accurately forecasting trends. While the "successes" highlighted in the website seems impressive, one has to question how much of this is due to a selection effect, where predictions are simply forgotten or not mentioned.

 

[chiro]

The important thing is for you to pay attention and then decide where you will go from there.

I like what Mr Celente does, but you may have a different viewpoint and that's OK: the main thing is though that if you want to see what might happen, it's important to connect up what is happening now and this means looking at what is going on in the world and listening to what lots of people are saying and thinking even if you may not initially think it's worth listening to.

It's not going to be easy but I figure that if you want to do this thing then at least you can look at someone like Mr Celente and see the kinds of things that a forecaster would look at.