- When we're just getting started finding a career pathway, the job market can seem like a massive puzzle.

With so many options out there, it's pretty easy to get overwhelmed.

Rather than randomly selecting a career and hoping you get lucky, in this video, we're gonna give you a few ways to explore the workforce more effectively, and we'll also take a look at our crystal ball to demystify the future of work.

- She means liquid crystal.

It's her computer.

Just saying.

- Fine, yes, my computer.

Regardless, if you haven't heard, the automated work robots are here to stay.

- The question is, are they going to be friendly to your chosen career?

(upbeat music) - What's up, career seekers?

Mary Williams back again because we're talking jobs.

And do I have some jobs to talk to you about today.

In this video, we wanna dive into the deep end of the labor market.

But before you get your goggles out, (sheets thudding) that is the sound of nearly 300 pages of jobs.

This is a standard occupational classification manual put out by the us government to list as many jobs as they possibly can.

Can you guess how many that is?

I'll give you three, two, one.

(clock ticking) (bell ringing) It's 867.

Whether or not you got that right, you may have been able to guess that for you and me, this catalog is not really the best tool for job exploration.

That's because it's not meant for us, it's meant for researchers and data crunchers.

For the rest of us, there are other ways to filter the job prospects out there.

That way, you can be informed, but not overwhelmed.

So let's get to it.

One of the most basic breakdowns that helps career searchers is to simplify the job market by looking at it as a number of career clusters, industries or sectors, check them out here.

The US government breaks them down into 16 different segments.

For clarity, we should probably define a few key words you might hear a lot around this topic.

First, an industry.

It's a group of businesses that have related activities or products such as the computer software industry or the pharmaceutical industry.

Meanwhile, the term sector usually describes a larger segment of the economy.

For instance, the healthcare sector, a lot falls under that umbrella.

Today though, we're looking at career clusters, they include a lot of different careers and sometimes multiple industries that share similar knowledge, skills, and interest.

Looking at careers through the perspective of clusters can help you further refine where you see yourself fitting in, which is also known as your occupational identity.

By slowly forming this identity, you'll be able to build confidence in your direction which will make finding your own pathway a little easier.

If you didn't already check out our other video on how to figure out what you wanna do, go check it out, but do that after this one, because we got clusters.

Not honey clusters, (bee buzzing) career clusters.

As you can see, these clusters cover pretty much everything you can get paid for, or at least that you'd want to get paid for.

For instance, this first one, agriculture.

Food and natural resources covers everything from working on a farm, raising livestock, processing and selling raw food or crops to extracting natural resources such as oil and other commodities.

On the flip side, it also encompasses careers trying to clean up hazardous environmental spills and keep some of those natural resources in the ground.

So the same basic space, but slightly different purposes there.

I won't go through every cluster here because it would take too long, but you can explore each of them through the link down below to the Ohio Means Jobs website, which is a great resource to navigate careers, no matter what age you are.

One of the key things to think about when using the clusters are really any method to simplify your career search as that some careers can plug into any general interest you might have.

The most obvious example of this is information technology.

Nearly every cluster or industry has a need for IT professionals to help support the work.

Other scientific and STEM-based careers are similar in that science can explore all areas of life and plug into most industries.

So if you're being pulled a few different ways, consider where those interests overlap and you might find your best fit.

The last point about clusters is that each one has a lot of different careers with different qualifications and training involved.

So check the fine print because not every pathway is the same when it comes to investing time, energy, and money to get training.

So that's one general way to decipher the job market.

Another thing that you might hear a lot about as you're exploring careers are things called in demand jobs, hot jobs, or high demand jobs, or something like that.

In demand is like a magic phrase in workforce development circles.

But let's be sure we know what it really means.

Basically, in demand in this context means that many companies are seeking to fill a certain job.

And so there are usually a lot of job openings for people who are qualified.

Just be sure to figure out why certain jobs may be hard to fill.

It could be that there's not enough qualified people out there in that job, which may be an opportunity for you.

No matter how a career is being lifted up on a pedestal, just make sure you know the true reason behind the hype.

Now, let's move this conversation forward.

The final component for today is one that's a lot harder to do.

And that's predicting the future of work.

None of us wants to pick a career that will disappear anytime soon.

- Who's got time for that?

- Exactly.

So how do we avoid this trap?

(crickets chirping) - I don't know, don't you have a crystal ball or something?

- I do, but that doesn't help us in this case.

The first step is to understand how the nature of work is shifting now and in the future.

- Speaking of time, I got a thing to go to.

Do your thing, girl, but I'm not guaranteeing you won't be replaced by a computer.

Okay, where was I?

You may be familiar with the idea of automation, but if not, it's how a lot of businesses and industries are using technology.

Whether it's literal robots or just computer systems to automate parts of the work, this is impacting and changing workers' roles in almost every sector, though some more than others.

One of the most obvious examples is in manufacturing.

They're using advanced technology to automate assembly lines and to accomplish a lot of repetitive task.

In a factory, that may mean that instead of 10 assembly plant workers on a line, maybe you have two.

And instead of handling physical assembly of a product, they are being trained to control and fix the new robotic assembly machines.

That's a basic example, but hopefully, you get the point, which is that the nature of work is evolving.

More workers today are utilizing technology in ways many didn't think was possible 20 or 30 years ago.

They've had to learn new skills along the way to make sure they stay relevant.

That practice of lifelong learning is now a permanent part of the working world.

Roles will change in some industries more than others.

So it's imperative for us, the next generation of workers, to be honest about what that will look like in the long run.

In many sectors, the integration of more technology will just make them stronger.

Some of those include healthcare, the building trades, and information technology.

From cybersecurity to network administration and coding.

So many coding jobs.

Remember, this sector overlaps all the others.

I'm serious, peeps.

I'm thinking about a side hustle in IT, you know, to take out some hackers.

Girls in STEM unite.

Was that corny?

Sorry, let's get back on task.

Where you live can also impact the opportunities available to you.

But as we've seen over the past few years, acceptance is growing for remote workers or working from home.

That's not for every job though, or every company yet.

A good rule of thumb is, if you want a job that's hands-on, it probably means you still need to show up for it.

Speaking of showing up, you'll need to be there at graduation time.

I mentioned lifelong learning before, but now and in the future, you'll still need a certain level of education or training to get started in most careers.

Current trends are showing that folks with a high school diploma or less are being displaced at nearly four times the rate of those with a post-high school graduate credential or a college degree.

So as you whittle down your list of career pathways, underline the educational training you'll need to get the jobs you want.

You don't always have to go into massive debt to start working either.

For some fields, you can pay for training as you go and stack up your credentials.

For others, you need to follow more traditional pathways.

Regardless, most of us would need more than high school to find success.

Especially since researchers say a good amount of jobs in the future haven't even been invented yet.

- The future is bright, young job seeker.

- Oh no, you didn't.

She went full a robot on us.

- Please, input job requirements for YouTube host.

- No way!

This series isn't getting automated.

- But efficiency and productivity are lagging.

- Clearly this video didn't help her, but I hope it helps you start out the job market in your own future a bit better.

Until next time, I'm Mary Williams.

- And this is Talking Jobs.

(upbeat music)