The 2020 pandemic have brought significant impact to businesses. It has been a year with so many challenges. Many entrepreneurs closed their businesses. Remote working may be something permanent. Efficiency is now the go-to strategy for many companies. Safety and health become recurring jargons in marketing strategies. While these consequences are no jokes, our exhausted attention to the 2020 pandemic has overshadowed an arguably classic issue which has been relevant for the past few decades: Industrial Revolution 4.0.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution has impacted the way we work and do businesses, and the 2020 pandemic is arguably a catalyst which accelerates how Industrial Revolution 4.0 changes the world. Like its predecessors, this most recent industrial revolution has affected jobs ever since it started. Many fear that AI and automation will entirely replace humans. This fear is not entirely unreasonable, as businesses leaders may choose more cost-effective and more accurate machines over human workers, which are prone to error.

But does it mean that there will be no jobs for human? Christine Wong, a former journalist in Toronto, predicted the opposite. In her article for Futurithmic.com, she argues that while many existing jobs will disappear, many new jobs will also emerge. An expert also predicts that Industrial Revolution 5.0 will focus on human-machine interaction instead of eradicating the need for humans once and for all. Rather than chasing us to death like in the first Terminator movie, it seems like robots will end up working with us instead.

Although jobs will remain available for us, we still need to prepare a world that is totally different from where we stand now. How will the world become, and how will it affect jobs? It is very likely that the answers to these questions will remain a mystery, but there are some insights we can take from a report published by the 2020 World Economic Forum. Titled Jobs of Tomorrow: Mapping Opportunity in the New Economy, the report predicts jobs that will exist in the future and skills that are essential for them.

According to the report, Care Economy will be the sector which create the most job openings. The industry has 41% annual growth, and it is estimated that 37% of job openings in three years will be related to this sector. The science of well-being and clinical simulations are the two skills highly popular for this type of job. Despite this sector’s vast range of opportunities, specific challenges related to formal recognition and equality will be an issue that linger.

Marketing, Sales and Content will become the second sector with the most job openings. In addition, this sector has 35% annual growth rate, prompting this area to constitute 17% of job opportunities in three years. Skills such as Digital Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) take the limelight among professionals in this sector. Forbes predicted that a challenge in this sector will be finding new technologies that are most suitable with a company’s needs.

Meanwhile, there is also Data and AI. Although ranking the third in terms of job opportunities, this cluster has the highest annual growth rates (41%), as expected from a Post Industrial Revolution 4.0 world. Relevant skills such as Cloud Computing and Product Development will be beneficial for those who pursue their career in this area. Challenges for data scientists come from external factors such as the struggle to provide value.

Regardless which sectors will thrive, jobs of the future will require us to be adaptive, resilient, and skillful. Businesses after the Fourth Industrial Revolution have been transforming at such a high speed, and technological advancement might eliminate many conventional jobs. In fact, maybe some of us have been affected by these changes. If you find yourself lagging behind amid these rapid changes, don’t worry. AI may dominate workplaces, but if you equip yourselves with the right skill sets and stay informed about future opportunities, you’ll be back.