In the first part of the Emerging Jobs Trends for 2030, we cover:
1. Trends in College Graduation Rates
2. Degree Attainment by Major
3. Key Macrotrends Impacting Jobs and Skills
1. Trends in College Graduation Rates
The number of students graduating from college has steadily increased over the past few decades, with a significant rise in degree conferrals since the early 2000s. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), the total number of bachelor's degrees awarded in the U.S. increased from approximately 1.2 million in 2000 to over 2 million by 2022.
Traditional Students – Graduation Rate Stable. Non-Traditional Students – Online Degrees
Year-over-year changes indicate fluctuations in graduation rates, largely influenced by economic conditions, policy changes, and the shifting demand for higher education. While graduation rates among traditional students (those completing degrees within six years) have remained stable, non-traditional students—such as working adults and online learners—are increasingly contributing to the total degree count.
Declining Community College Enrollment
Community college enrollment and associate degree attainment have declined in recent years, reflecting a trend where students either opt for vocational training, direct entry into the workforce or transfer to four-year institutions.
2. Degree Attainment by Major
Degree preferences have shifted significantly over the years. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and business-related majors have seen notable growth, whereas education and humanities degrees have seen a decline.
STEM
Engineering, computer science, and data analytics have experienced rapid growth due to increasing demand for technology professionals. Between 2010 and 2022, computer science degrees grew by over 80%, while data science programs were introduced to cater to the AI and Big Data push we witnessed since 2015. With Generative AI and Agentic AI, the demand is likely to fine-tune to specialist skills in AI integration and building in-house AI agents. Beyond skills around AI integration (Python and R), Java and .Net openings have also reached pre-slowdown levels.
Business & Finance
Business administration, finance, and accounting degrees remain strong as these fields continue to offer lucrative career prospects. Businesses that have standardized their bookkeeping would find more insights from AI integration. Even now, a large part of the audits are manually analyzed, highlighting the increasing complexity of the task of ‘verification’ in the audit process. A large part of the bill and expense verification will eventually move to AI, paving the way for early opportunities in Financial Consulting instead of the traditional manual audit experience before progressing to consulting roles. A similar and faster transition is expected in Finance roles with strong due diligence requirements.
Healthcare & Life Sciences
Nursing, biotechnology, and public health programs have expanded to meet the growing demand for healthcare professionals, especially post-pandemic. With an estimated 207,980 registered nurses (RNs) and 302,440 licensed practical nurses (LPNs) shortages in the US and a similar 40,000 nursing vacancies in the NHS in the UK paint a similar shortage in care delivery. While biotechnology and drug discovery will find momentum with AI, the last-mile delivery of care is unlikely to be upended without transformative development of robots with caring expertise.
Declining Majors
Humanities degrees (such as history, English, and philosophy) have declined as students increasingly prioritize job security and salary prospects over academic interest. Even MBA programs that had a diverse incoming class a decade ago are now optimizing for Business, Engineering, and Economics majors, with Humanities a preferred profile only at Tuck and Wharton. The good news is that M7 and Top US MBA programs still continue to attract 11-25% from Humanities backgrounds. An exclusive ‘Humanities’ degree candidate with limited entrepreneurial or unique life experiences is an exception in the application pool. A Double major in humanities can dramatically improve an applicant’s odds of building systemized and functional thinking required in the modern workforce.
3. Key Macrotrends Impacting Jobs and Skills
Technological Change and Digital Transformation
Broadening digital access is the most transformative trend, with 60% of employers expecting it to reshape their businesses.
AI, big data (86%), robotics and automation (58%), and energy technologies (41%) will drive job demand in tech-related fields.
Despite 75% of employers sharing their recent integration of AI, the skill gap and a lack of data culture would require setting policies and strategies to build a data-first culture before any meaningful insights can be derived with AI.
The fastest-growing skills include AI and big data, networking and cybersecurity, and technological literacy. The cybersecurity offerings will be increasingly disrupted with state-sponsored actors accessing better generative AI and AI tool to automate attacks. Although such practices are prevalent, the record speed of building exploits with gen-AI tools is a threat that many businesses have not anticipated. Building guardrails against ‘risky’ prompts would need a unified effort to address AI security.
Economic Uncertainty and Cost of Living Increases
Inflation and slow economic growth will force businesses to prioritize profit over growth at any cost. The work-from-home dynamics is likely to reduce the cost-of-living pressures on most businesses, while Fortune 500 companies with large real-estate portfolios risk antagonizing talent with return-to-office mandates. The balance is tricky, and a culture that accepted the advantage of working from home during the pandemic is unlikely to find the daily commute to be a better option. Companies are hoping to wait for Gen Z to enter the workforce in swarms to address the nostalgia of Millennials.
Attrition and talent management would be a key strategic goal that a new generation of People Operations professionals might have to navigate.
While the economic slowdown is expected to displace 1.6 million jobs globally, inflation has a mixed impact on net job creation.
Resilience, flexibility, agility, and creative thinking skills will be valued the most in emerging jobs.
Climate Change and the Green Transition
Climate mitigation (47%) and adaptation (41%) are among the most transformative trends. Growth in demand for renewable energy engineers, environmental engineers, and autonomous vehicle specialists will redefine traditional engineering roles with policy perspective, engineering, and soft skills valued the most in such a paradigm.
Demographic Shifts and Workforce Dynamics
Aging populations in high-income economies drive demand for healthcare roles. Except for a higher demand for in-person care, the demographic shift in the next 5 years should concern investors as the ‘spending’ age – the 18 to 35 group only fits markets in India (33-34 median age) and Africa (~25 median age), while Japan (median age 53), South Korea (56), Europe (~47), and the US (~40) falls outside the high-frequency shoppers; a demographic development that is likely to affect retail and consumer goods while strengthening the real estate industry.
Geoeconomic Fragmentation and Trade Disruptions
One-third of businesses (34%) expect their models to change due to geopolitical and economic fragmentation.
Trade restrictions, industrial policies, and supply chain disruptions are shaping global employment strategies.
With the power struggle between the US and China is in the open for the past decade, the next wave of development will be driven by policies and businesses that can manage the skills of new China (Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand) – opening up new power dynamics, skill requirements, and demographic challenges for 2030.
Job Creation vs. Job Displacement
Over the 2025-2030 period, total job transformation will impact 22% of today's employment.
170 million jobs will be created, while 92 million will be displaced, resulting in a net gain of 78 million jobs.
Apart from the obvious trimming in Technology and Consulting roles that earlier spearheaded digitization, the cascading effect of AI and Climate Change is not fully understood.
Climate Finance
With Finance courses exclusively catering to Climate Science emerging from the US with the announcement from Columbia, peer schools and schools ranking better than CBS are likely to enter the market.
Curriculum Changes
As specialized courses and skills are demanded in AI, Finance, Biotechnology, and Supply Chain Management, a traditional approach to building foundational skills through core curriculum and electives will be redefined again. While customizing the core curriculum was a novelty a decade ago, schools that understood the dynamic nature of the job market introduced options to start experiential learning and the ability to customize the core curriculum in the first year itself, many in the first 3 months itself. Such experiential learning opportunities will drive the school’s offering, where foundational skills in accounting, economics, and marketing will be conducted in a hybrid format.
Growing Job Sectors
As expected, frontline workers (farmworkers, delivery drivers, construction workers, salespersons, food processing workers), Care economy (nursing, social work, personal care aides), Education (secondary and tertiary education teachers), Technology-related roles (AI, big data, fintech engineers, software developers) and skill-based roles (plumbers, electrician) will continue to experience growth in salary and opportunities as fewer roles exist to cover the ‘middle and lower-middle’ of the skill spectrum that will be automated or taken over by AI.
Green transition roles (renewable energy engineers, environmental specialists, autonomous vehicle engineers) will experience a boom that will be similar to the AI hype we began to witness in 2023. The roles are likely to sustain for over two decades as the intersection of climate-change denialists and climate-change accepters waiting it out is changing rapidly with each switch of the government in the US.
Developing economies have embraced the idea of renewable with sizable infrastructure already planned and budgeted to build the essential infrastructure for the transition. Still, leadership in the US lack an urgency with climate innovations. Perhaps a threat of climate technology dominance in China is likely to wake the US government from its slumber.
Declining Job Sectors: While Clerical and secretarial roles (cashiers, administrative assistants, executive secretaries) and service sector roles (postal service clerks, bank tellers, data entry clerks) are likely to diminish, previous predictions about the world cocooned in a virtual world turned out to be an imagination of the tech bros in an immobile pandemic era. A similar correction is likely to be experienced where assumed redundant roles might face a resurgence not from the need but to counter the increasing adoption of Agentic AI as assistants in society.
A similar rebellion happened when Amazon tried the big push with its Kindle Devices in 2007. The resistance led to one of the best years in hard-cover book sales from 2007 to 2009, with some estimates showing the sales crossed the 770 million units annually. Only when Amazon abandoned the push to sell hardware and adopted Kindle as a software did they gain back some market share. The novelty died down in 2019, and again, society went back to books.
A similar swing pattern is likely to be experienced in declining roles, especially roles where customers need assistance (customer executive, administrative assistants). The skills then would be better evolved to tackle modern workflow.
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