Will we have jobs in 2025 and beyond? If we do, what will they be, what will we do and how and when will we do it?

With the growing cry that technology is taking our jobs, statistics around that robots will displace 500,000 jobs in Australia over the next decade and a general downer about the long-term availability of employment and work, it’s not hard to feel that it’s all over, all too hard, let’s go home, hunker down and start living a self-sufficient off the grid life.

If this is how you’re feeling, then get a life!

Really, it’s not all doom and gloom and that’s where Rachel and Sarah of ABC Gippsland’s Tuesday Chinwag and I started our chat this week, looking at the pragmatic reality of work in the future and the jobs that we might soon be doing.

The conversation started by acknowledging that there is currently a huge displacement in the workforce and that this may continue for the next 10 years and beyond.

That technology, as it has done throughout the millenniums, is changing the employment and work landscape and the tasks and jobs that once had work currency, no longer do and that the world of science fiction and “that’s impossible” may hold the clues to many of our future industries and careers.

The very notion of work itself is also evolving away from the 9-5, Monday to Friday industrial revolution model that served us well for the past 150 years, to a more dynamic and fluid model of work gets done best, where and when its most appropriate to the task(s) and people involved.

Our conversation quickly turned to the reality that routinised jobs across blue and white-collar workers (how old-fashioned) are fast disappearing as consumers demand the end products and services, but are reluctant to pay too much for them, leaving manufacturers and suppliers to find ever cheaper forms of production usually ending in a technology rather than a human employment solution.

What does this leave for humans to do? My answer is always wrapped in this thought:

“Technology is for answering the questions, humans are for asking the questions.”

There are many of our existing jobs and a tonne of new jobs in tomorrow’s job horizon.

Work for many of us will be a portfolio of activities, some for income, some for enjoyment, some for philanthropy and some just because. We will work for an employer and perhaps have side activities selling our service on Airtasker, our craft on Etsy, our products on ebay, or maybe driving a couple of hours a month for Uber to pay off a bill.

Like life, there is no single answer to tomorrow’s employment landscape, except to say that we will work. But what work is, what we get paid for, how much and how often are not straight forward or linear.

Get set for a brand new workspace, that today seems just as improbable as abolishing slavery, stopping child labour, working 5 days a week and an 8 hour day all did in their time and place in history.

Have a listen now (13 minutes) and then share or like this and let’s get the debate on the future of work started.