- [Presenter] Future Jobs is made possible by these major funders.

(light upbeat music) And these generous supporters.

(light upbeat music) Thank you.

(soft airy music) - Find what you want to do, take that skill, and master it.

- [Narrator] ] It's never too early to think about your future and the careers that are all around us.

- I wanted to do something with my hands.

Building and creating things was something I loved to do when I was younger.

- [Narrator] The digital age continues to open new doors for young people.

- Data analytics has been growing for some number of years.

I expect that it will continue into the future.

- [Narrator] From skilled trades and healthcare, to the arts and robotics.

- So I think it's a very exciting time for robotics because we don't really know where it's going next.

- [Narrator] So what are the trending jobs?

And how do you get them?

- I had no computer background going into college whatsoever.

I didn't even realize that this was something I could go into.

- [Narrator] These are just a few careers to consider.

The future jobs that just might be in your future.

(bright upbeat music) - I went into welding because it's not going anywhere.

We have industrialized our entire society and we're only gonna continue to build.

(energetic music) My name's Katie Boyce.

I'm a student here at Pittsburgh Technical College for welding technology, and I'm in my fourth term.

The idea of melting metal has always kinda fascinated me.

- As a welding student coming into a trade school, the main things that you're gonna learn, I would say, would be basically just the fundamentals of a weld.

That's where the foundation is.

That's your stepping stone and your start.

As far as the industry goes, as long as you learn those stepping stones and you work hard, then you can go out and make $100,000 a year.

This country relies on metal for a little bit of everything.

The workforce in welding is aging.

We need a younger generation to fill those spots.

In the Pittsburgh region, I would say it's moving.

There's industry everywhere.

I talk to employers all the time and they're beating our door down for welders.

(energetic music) Welding's worldwide and if you wanna travel and go overseas and weld, it's perfectly possible.

Go where you want and be what you want and build what you want.

- [Katie] There's welds literally everywhere.

Whatever you wanna build, you can build it.

Wherever your imagination can take you, you can take yourself.

(light relaxed music) - Art is more accessible than you think it is.

It' not very necessary to have a degree in the arts because art itself is very subjective.

There are animation programs that are accessible and free.

- I work as a game programmer for Digital Dream Labs.

My primary job is to program the game play, the UI implementation, create datas, and various visual effects for the game.

(upbeat music) People here come from various backgrounds with a passion to make games or videos or animations.

Even artists, programmers, designers, and producers.

- I animate for all character assets or almost all of them for the game.

My interest in art has always been with me.

I've always been interested in comic books and later on, animation.

I think that it's one of the most effective ways to do storytelling in our culture right now.

- [Swapnil] The team comes together and then everyone brings some ideas to the table like what is the character?

What are the basic actions of the game and the basic goals?

And once we all are excited about one idea, that's when we take it to the next phase of the prototype.

- We talk together and plan out what character design do we like best.

From there on, we would make spreadsheets of each of their movement, how they would move.

If I were to wave my hand, it's very simple.

Here and here.

And then I would just have to fill out everything in between and that's what usually animation is.

- [Swapnil] Nowadays, programming is widely used in everything.

Not just games.

- [An] When it comes to working as an animator, there are different ways that you can work.

(upbeat music) - I feel like the game industry has evolved a lot and now is a very good time to be in this industry.

(light upbeat music) - There is basically no cost to anyone that comes into our program.

There is a small out-of-pocket fee to buy your books and some tools and get started.

But once you're in our program, there isn't a monthly fee that you pay or pay per year.

You come here and we're basically teaching you for free.

(light upbeat music) Basically, an iron worker is someone who you may not have noticed every day when you're driving down the road, but we erect all the structural steel that you see out on bridges, highways, that concrete that all the stadium seating is in, office buildings, all the windows that go up on the outside of these skyscrapers.

(light upbeat music) When we talk about iron workers in the future, they're always gonna be needed.

The work climate in Pittsburgh is really good right now.

The truth is most iron workers do the job because of what they're building.

Most of our training is hands on so we try to do about 40% theory and about 60% hands on.

Here, the most important things that we look for in iron workers are work ethic and their attendance.

We have apprentices from 18 to 61 with all very diverse backgrounds.

Males, females.

The opportunity's here for anyone who wants to get into our training.

I drive into downtown Pittsburgh.

I can see a lotta structures that I worked on personally.

It's a pretty proud feeling to say that you're a part of that.

- Robotics as a field is creating a huge demand for people.

These robots do not build themselves.

We need armies of smart, dedicated, resourceful people to come up with them, put them together, get them out in the field, make them useful.

(light electronic music) Robotics is a very broad technology with a lotta parts.

To me, it's making the next generation of tools for people.

A robot might have a lot of computation to do a lot of planning, thinking, reacting to the world, and then there are parts of it that are involved in controlling the motion, motors, gears, sensors, software, all involved in just making a single joint move.

Here at at HEBI and in robotics in general, there's a wide range of requirements for what we need to be able to make all this work.

People that have spent years and years in school at the leading edge of their field.

We've got people that are straight out of high school.

There is tons of work in software and machine learning, artificial intelligence, computer vision, creating new sensors.

There's also bio-inspired robotics.

It is a growing field.

We are competing with Silicon Valley 'cause all these people are here in Pittsburgh and competing for the same talent that we are in terms of developers, researchers, engineers.

We're looking for people that have amazing attention to detail and are really lifelong learners.

Whether you're writing software or whether you're actually physically assembling models, we need people that can learn as things are changing because they're evolving rapidly.

No matter what you're interested is, don't be afraid to just dive into the details.

Take something apart.

Learning how to do that is, I think, really how you get the bug for learning.

(light upbeat music) - People come into the IBEW-NECA Apprenticeship Program with all levels of experience.

They learn all the things they need to know to be an electrician through our IBEW-NECA Apprenticeship Program.

Our electricians work on everything from high-voltage systems to building automation systems, electrical vehicle charging stations, industrial facilities like the shell cracker plant, Heinz Field, and the David L. Lawrence Convention Center.

There's a really high demand for electricians right now.

Solar energy, wind energy, all types of clean and renewable energy is something that our electricians are trained to do and something that we will be seeing more of in the future.

The IBEW-NECA Apprenticeship Program is a five-year paid apprenticeship program.

And students in the program don't pay for their education.

- My name's Andy Sibinac.

I'm a union electrician for the IBEW.

I've always been a hands-on type of worker.

I went through a four-year college, got my degree.

I worked as a logistics broker doing computer work every day.

It just wasn't for me so I got into the Local Five Apprenticeship Program.

There's power from when you turn your light on at home to anywhere you go.

Everything needs maintaining, everything needs updating so it's very busy time.

I think in the future, it's just gonna keep growing and growing.

- IBEW electricians make family-sustaining wages and they get family-sustaining benefits that are second-to-none.

There's a lot of job security in being an electrician.

And a lot of times, they even find it rewarding and they love doing it.

(bright upbeat music) - There will be about 30,000 jobs available in this sector in the next five to ten years.

So low-to-medium skill manufacturing jobs anywhere from entry level manufacturing jobs to engineers.

There's a lot of potential and there's a lot of opportunities for students to come through a program such as ourselves and get really good careers.

We are a workforce development initiative and we are really tailored towards connecting people with jobs in advanced manufacturing.

So we do machining classes, CNC programming and operations, and we do a CAD/CAM class.

If you look at jobs in advanced manufacturing, a lot of people have this preconceived idea that it's a steel mill from the 1970s, when in fact they're all really sophisticated environments and they're clean, climate-controlled atmospheres.

- Before I came to this program, the first thing that came to mind with manufacturing was just you sitting on an assembly line and just passing things left to right.

There's a lot more than you just putting pieces together.

- A lot of this equipment, it's all high-tech now.

There's a lot of computer applications associated with these machines that you can run a machine with your iPhone.

Pittsburgh has this urban manufacturing renaissance.

There are companies that manufacture 3D printers, fabric from recycled water bottles found in Haiti.

There's a lot of Department of Defense work.

There's a lot of companies that are making stuff for the tech industry so we're making the satellite mounts for the self-driving cars.

There's a lot of opportunities to be in this sector and do interesting work.

- I thought manufacturing in America was gone.

There wasn't people doing it and there's probably 10 shops within a mile of where anybody lives.

It's a great career to go into.

I'm 17.

I just got outta high school.

It's pretty cool to be able to do this, something I actually enjoy, something that's gonna pay well.

- [Claire] Southwestern Pennsylvania is growing in manufacturing, and companies have never been this desperate for hiring people.

- I started this program two months ago.

It feels good that I could say that I've learned a whole new entire skill within a short amount of time, and I also have a job lined up, as well.

It feels good to know there's other options out there for you to make a living and make a name for yourself.

(light upbeat music) - In terms of other positions within the FBI, you don't necessarily need a masters degree, but a computer background certainly will help.

And one of the things that helps with that is the STEM Program.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

And there are different STEM schools within the Pittsburgh area.

But that's one way to start out, getting that cyber background.

- There's a lotta stuff that bad guys can do on the internet with your information.

My name is Erica Totaro and I'm an intel analyst at the NCFTA.

I see every day, there's something new.

A new breach, a new vulnerability.

- The cyber crime realm is only gonna grow.

That's why we need an elite team of cyber investigators, special agents, computer forensics, computer scientists.

My name's Michael McKeown.

I'm a supervisory special agent with the Pittsburgh FBI Field Office.

The FBI is one of the partners of the NCFTA, the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance.

We, in conjunction with other industry partners, work together to try to solve cyber crime.

- The threat is never gonna go away, so we need more people in the field who understand how it works.

I like the feeling that I'm doing something good.

I know that this interests me and that I can use that interest to help other people.

- So at SSPC, we have a wide range of different training courses and certifications so there is a career pathway for people in the industry that wanna become blasters or painters.

SSPC holds about 700 classes a year.

(light upbeat music) Protective coating is something that's gonna protect the substrate from corrosion.

And if you're talking about what is a substrate?

That's a steel or concrete industrial structure.

There are coating systems where they apply the coating to a bridge or to a water tank years ago, and that system starts to fail because of salt and degradation to the coating.

So the process to apply a coating starts with the surface preparation of the structure.

The role of a blaster is to ensure that the surface is clean.

You then start applying an industrial grade type of coating.

Commonly, the person that might wanna get into this line of work would be someone who likes to work with their hands, so someone that isn't gonna want to sit behind a desk 40 hours a week.

Someone in this industry could be on a bridge one day, on a ship the next day.

Buildings, as well.

The stadiums.

All of these things have corrosion issues that a blaster or painter would be able to keep the corrosion from happening on those structures.

There are competitive wages out there that are equal to four-year degrees that you might get.

(light upbeat music) - So through high school, I took a lot of engineering courses, took a lot of physics courses, and a lot of math courses.

With associates degrees, you can pretty much be a technician on the machines or a designer.

Engineers will get more into the heavy mathematical equations on how to properly make these machines efficient.

My name is Max Inks.

I'm an electrical designer here at the ExOne Company.

Additive manufacturing is a technology where you add layers upon layers of material to form a three-dimensional part.

We can pretty much make almost anything.

We can go from the auto industry, the heavy energy industry, the mining industry, art deco, to consumer-grade parts.

What this technology allows you to do is make more complex, more efficient printed parts.

We always say, "Oh no, you can never print that," and we give it a shot and we're like, "Oh wow, that's a new capability" "that this machine has never had."

With my two associates degrees, I found a wonderful experience here.

Really, I'm enjoying myself.

If you have a passion and you just have that undying urge to make something work, then follow your dreams.

- One of the nice things about my current role is we have five or six or seven jobs we're over each year and every one's different.

So every single time we start a new job, we're evaluating the way the wells were drilled, the new technologies that are available.

We're always coming up with a new design or a new way to do things.

It's never the same.

My name is David Phillips.

I'm a completions engineer at CNX Resources.

In the oil and gas industry, we drill for natural gas.

After the drilling has been completed, there are some additional steps we have to do to get the gas to come to surface.

And that's my responsibility as a completions engineer.

We pump water and sand at high rates and high pressures to break up the rock.

Once that rock is broken up, we're able to flow gas and oil to surface.

Two days a week, I'll head out to the field to our job locations, meet with our consultants and representatives out in the field, and make sure the job is going as planned.

Another two days a week, we spend time in the office writing procedures, doing our modeling, different technical tasks that are completed.

Completions has a lot of new technologies, which makes our job exciting.

Things like Evolution, which is a new fracturing technology that we use.

It's electric instead of diesel, so it's much more clean.

It's quieter.

Less noise, less truck traffic.

Much more environmentally friendly.

A majority of the people that hold my position as a completions engineer would study petroleum and natural gas engineering in college.

The oil and gas industry is a global industry and there's opportunities all over the world.

Within the United States, it is a more limited market in where you can work, but there is a lot of opportunities within the country.

I would recommend this job to a lot of people.

It's a very fast-paced job.

It keeps you engaged.

Never a boring day when we come to the office.

It's a high-paying job that can really provide for your family.

It's very rewarding, so I'm very lucky.

(upbeat music) - I think that data has the opportunity to create access to information and tools and learning that historically either maybe only a small group of people had access to, or just wasn't available.

Data has a bright future.

(electronic music) Data, in a lot of different ways, is changing many aspects of our life and of the world, and sports is just one area where that's happening really, really rapidly.

In baseball and softball in particular, it's still a very numbers-driven game.

It's a game built around statistics.

We've developed sensor technology and that sensor technology allows us to take sensors and put them inside of baseball bats, and then put sensors inside of baseballs and softballs.

The ability to have that sensor gives us the opportunity to collect really valuable information on what happens with those motions.

We collect almost 10,000 data points per second, and we understand exactly how that ball or that bat is moving through space so the angles, the speeds, the positions of it.

- A really approachable metric that most people understand is just velocity rate, so hard am I throwing that ball.

We use all of the data coming out of the accelerometer, which measures acceleration, and the gyroscope, which really measures how the ball is oriented in space to generate this really impressive 3D picture of both the pitch and the swing.

Once we receive all that data, we have what we call a physics engine that looks at all of the data that was recorded from inside the sensors, and it turns that into this real-world representation of what happened.

I look at sports and tech in particular as a great way to merge your passions.

I was somebody who loved computers growing up and I just happened to be playing sports all the time.

Never thought I'd be inside of a company that was doing sports and tech together.

If you think about where your passions lie, there is probably an industry around the intersection of your passions.

- [Man On Right] Wanna get some more?

You want this?

I love that this job helps me improve someone else's life.

I'm coming into a person's life, sharing experiences with them, and I'm enriching their life and I'm enriching my life at the same time.

I can't see myself doing any other line of work.

I really enjoy my job.

(light relaxed music) - Passavant Memorial Homes Family of Services is a human services organization.

We provide an array of services to support individuals with intellectual disabilities, autism, and behavioral health needs.

The whole mission and focus of the organization is really to promote choice and independence for the individuals we serve.

- [Timothy] (masked) All right, so let's try to do this.

Take it with your hand.

All right.

I've been a direct support professional for about 13 and a half years.

I'm basically there to do whatever they need, whatever will help them get more enrichment out of their lives.

In a general house, a routine, you get 'em up, you get 'em breakfast going.

If they have a job, they have to be on time for.

Someone has to be there for these people because they have a hard time doing things that we take for granted.

- This field is in very high demand for folks that have compassion and dedication.

A lot of our staff have high school diplomas.

There is no requirement for a college degree for many of our positions.

We provide the comprehensive training to make sure that you have everything you need to be successful at this job.

(light upbeat music) - I really enjoy going to work.

I enjoy seeing those improvements that the clients make in their lives.

And it's just fun.

- I think of the industry at large in terms of direct care positions.

It's only going to grow in the future.

It's a field that I think a lot of people really find exciting and a great place to call home for a career.

- Part of what we do as physical therapists, we wear many hats and can work in many different places in a multitude of areas, which is exciting for me and my colleagues.

How do you feel?

Shoulder pain to back pain to folks who are having difficulty walking.

The differences are vast in why we might be seeing someone here for physical therapy.

- My name is Jacqui Barnes and I'm a rehabilitation aid.

We help the clinic to run smoothly, bring patients back, take vitals, get them on things like the bike or get them heat or ice.

The rehabilitation aid is someone who is interested in healthcare, someone who is good with people, as well as someone who enjoys exercise and movement.

(bright upbeat music) - My name is Robert Jesmer.

I'm a physical therapy intern.

Day to day, we look to see what impairments patients have whether it's getting out the chair, going up and down the stairs at home, and provide them treatment, some sort of stretching, and then exercises to help strengthen them so they can get back to doing their usual activities.

My favorite part of my job is getting to know patients and make a connection with them, and then being able to help them achieve their goals and to see that smile on their face when they're like, "Hey, I was able to get back to playing golf" "over the weekend."

Or "I was able to play with my grandchildren."

This is a great career opportunity if you're someone who likes science and who likes to be active, you don't want to be sitting behind a desk for too long.

- Many options exist for physical therapists.

A setting like this, go to the hospital setting, working with teams such as the Penguins, the Steelers, the Pirates.

(narrating) Getting their players ready to go for their season ahead and enjoying the season, as well.

- It's really amazing to see how someone can come in and be in a lot of pain, and over the course of weeks or months, get to the point where they're enjoying their life more and be able to do the things that they want to do.

- PartnerUp is the way that we are working to solve the problem of having a shortfall of workers in the Pittsburgh region, and also looking to make sure that our young folks have a great idea of the opportunities that do exist.

So last time, we talked about branding and professionalism.

Someone recap what a personal brand is for me.

We go into the school districts and deliver a career development program.

It's really focused on giving students ideas of what we as employers think is important as they make these big decisions about what comes after high school graduation.

- I did not know what I wanted to do outta high school.

That was something that stressed me out a lot, and so when I learned about the PartnerUp Program, it kinda was like, "This is something else you can do" "until you figure it out."

And I actually ended up liking it a lot so I'm just like, maybe this is what I was supposed to do.

- As part of PartnerUp, we're going in and meeting the students where they're at, working through skills, helping them build resumes, prep them for interviews, with the ultimate goal that they would be hired at our partner companies, as well as PNC.

PNC has a host of entry-level jobs.

Some of our other employer partners have roles as nursing assistant or nursing support, roles where you're setting up cable and internet for large providers in the area, as well as in-store support for some of our utility companies and even large local grocers in the Pittsburgh region.

- The more I went to the meetings, I was more and more intrigued with PNC.

The fact that I stuck with it and stayed is something I'm definitely proud of myself for.

- Hello, how may I assist you today?

- [Narrator] For more careers to consider, information on trending jobs, and helpful resources, visit WQED.org/futurejobs.

(light upbeat music)