Dubbed the ‘Iso Babies, kids born during the pandemic will need to develop vastly different skills for the workforce of 2038. Here’s how they can get a head start.

In about 18 years, today’s newborns — dubbed the Iso Babies — will be entering the workforce for the first time.

The jobs they do, the skills they need, and the way they work and learn will no doubt be very different.

Experts share their predictions and their advice for parents of children born amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

How will they work?

By 2038, people will work longer hours than ever before – and have an 80 year career.

That’s the prediction of futurist Morris Miselowski, who has partnered with employment marketplace SEEK to uncover key trends.

“I’m not saying the future generations will be in the office longer hours than now,” he says.

“But due to technology advances it is harder to leave work behind.”

Miselowski predicts 60 per cent of the population will also be working in more than one role.

“In the past, the social norm was to have one job whereas our children will soon have a number of jobs at any given time,” he says.

“By 2038, our children will be planning for 80-plus years of career and 100-plus years of life.”

What Jobs Will They Do?

Many future jobs will be focused on food creation as the population continues to grow and the world must find new ways to keep up with demand for food, Miselowski says.

“Roles in this industry will include 4D-printed food technician, cultured meat scientist, synthetic food designer, food-as-medicine nutritionist and food bank logistic officer,” he says.

The futurist also forecasts jobs in the energy sector will develop as society becomes more energy efficient and jobs in transport and logistics will boom as people change the way they get around.

“Owning a car and having a driver’s licence will not be the norm for a teenager in 2038,” he says.

“Instead, they’ll expect their tech to autonomously organise a ride share, hire them a bike, book and pay for public transport, provide walking directions or provide options on how to get there.”

The largest increase in jobs, however, is expected in health.

“As we are living for longer, there is going to be a shift in the typical health practices, and the focus will be on wellness and self-care jobs, along with new technology advances in these areas,” Miselowski says.

He does not predict any industries will disappear altogether, but expects a significant decrease in physical and manual jobs as well as administrative jobs such as bookkeeping, filing roles and clerks.

Futurist Michael McQueen says artificial intelligence is already taking over a lot of functions in law and accounting.

He says the jobs that won’t be affected will be those that require resilience, creativity and the ability to negotiate.

Which skills will be needed?

The human skills that will be most important for today’s iso babies are communication, empathy, imagination, creativity, wisdom and the ability to collaborate with others.

But human skills will not be the only skills in demand.

A new report from AlphaBeta commissioned by Amazon Web Services (AWS) predicts the number of workers in the Asia-Pacific region needing digital skills will increase more than five-fold in the next five years alone. It finds 64 per cent of Australian workers currently apply digital skills in their job and about one in five apply “advanced” digital skills — such as the ability to customise digital solutions or create new digital tools, software and applications.

AlphaBeta managing director Dr Fraser Thompson says people will need to think of skills in two buckets — horizontal and vertical skills.

“Horizontal skills are the ones that cut across different areas and technologies (such as) digital problem solving, digital ethics and digital project management,” he says. “These are the no-brainers all workers will need to develop going forward.

“Vertical competencies are more technology specific (such as cloud architecture and cybersecurity) and more likely to change.

“You’ll need the combination of both to be competitive in the future.”

How will they learn?

Thompson says there will be increased acceptance of lifelong learning in the future.

“Roughly 80 per cent of our learning happens before age 21, which is crazy,” he says. “It doesn’t make sense especially now, considering our increasing lifespan and time in the workforce.”

Mum Hayley Learman, 30, says her 10-week-old son Finnlay will likely have an education and career that is very different to hers. She has not yet considered what he might be when he grows up, but plans to encourage him and his brother Archer, 2, to follow in their father Ricky’s engineering footsteps.

“We will just make sure they are across everything and learn whatever is relevant for their generation,” she says.

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