The Four Most In-Demand and Widely-Adopted Skill Sets in the Job Market

The question of whether robots will eventually take the place of skilled workers is once again being discussed in light of all the attention being paid to OpenAI's ChatGPT, the chatbot that headlines are proclaiming might kill the student essay or provide a substitute for authors.

Who knows how the chatbot will affect people in the long run. However, a recent report from the Burning Glass Institute, produced in collaboration with the Business-Higher Education Forum and Wiley, demonstrates that skills in artificial intelligence and machine learning are among the most rapidly expanding and widely used in the job market—and that having them can lead to workers being paid more, as opposed to less.

According to Matt Sigelman, head of the nonprofit Burning Glass Institute, "the idea that automation is this lurking catastrophe on the horizon is something we should examine." We can observe that those whose jobs require them to use automation abilities are compensated much more than those whose jobs do not.

Nevertheless, he agrees that the average occupation is one in which abilities are changing quickly and that individuals who don't keep up with these changes may be at risk. Jobs that require completely new sets of skills that individuals in the economy today haven't yet mastered may be more to blame for the type of displacement we're seeing than jobs that are disappearing altogether.

So what competencies should job seekers concentrate on? The research from the Institute, released on December 1st, gives some suggestions. It examined information from 228 million job posts over the previous seven years, classifying about 30,000 skills—ranging from data engineering to welding—into 444 "clusters" of abilities.

Four skill clusters were identified as the fastest growing (those with the highest rate of growth since 2018) and most widely dispersed from that research (those that show up in the broadest array of industries). These four skill sets—artificial intelligence and machine learning; cloud computing; product management; and social media—are changing the job market and providing the greatest chances for employees, according to Sigelman, because of their rate of expansion and reach.

These are the skill sets that, in his opinion, are most likely to be incorporated into the work that you do. According to the research, one in eight job listings in 2021 called for one of the four skill sets.

Sigelman discussed the institute's findings on Nov. 15 at Forbes' Future of Work Summit, where he was included in the magazine's first list of those influencing the future of work.

Despite indications of an economic slowdown, "talent shortages will persist," Sigelman stated in November. "What we're observing is a mismatch between the skills that the market requires and the skills that are available. His research shows that in the last five years, on average, 37% of the skills required for a given occupation have been replaced "due to automation, technology, and the diversification of skills across the market.

The in-depth analysis also discovered that individuals who acquire the four skill sets outperform U.S. occupations generally in terms of pay, frequently by a significant margin.

Additionally, it identifies any skills that are "submerging," that is, growing relatively slowly or negatively. These include online design and development, specialist sales, database architecture, and business consulting. Database administrators, personal financial advisors, and auditors are among the professions that are on the decline, according to the research.

Sigelman recommends job searchers to focus more on developing their talents than on particular businesses or positions. He claims that choosing the correct profession is frequently at least as important for putting you in control of your career as developing the appropriate abilities.

He claims that people can locate possibilities in domains where requirements are developing yet there are still significant skills shortages by identifying abilities that are both rapidly expanding and spreading across industries. He cites marketing as an example, a profession with a large number of "right-brained" creative individuals who are good communicators but lack sufficient experience with cutting-edge technical know-how on topics like automation or data analytics. There will inevitably be a shortage when such types of junctions occur in the market.