On the Job in 2001 : Experts See a Brave New Workplace Filled With Exo-Botanists, Laser Repairmen and Robot Engineers

S. Norman Feingold, a Washington clinical psychologist who specializes in career counseling, has a favorite illustration for a point he makes frequently:

“Once upon a time in this country, Ben Franklin could take his son for a walk through the streets of Philadelphia and point out all the jobs that were available. Today there are more than 30,000 different job titles to choose from.”

And that figure, according to this expert on emerging careers, is merely another springboard.

“We’re creating new jobs and casting off old ones at an unprecedented rate,” Feingold said in a telephone interview. A futurist and unabashed positive thinker, he looks beyond the turn of the century and envisions a range of exotic new careers taking shape: Ocean hotel manager, wellness consultant, sports law specialist, lunar astronomer, robot trainer, electronic mail technician.

Careers in Transition

“We all have jobs that are in transition,” Feingold said. “It’s a dynamic situation today in which the rules keep changing. We can no longer think in terms of 30-year service to the company and the gold watch.”

His Labor Day advice for the American worker who just wants one job, not 30,000, is simple: Stay nimble.

Feingold’s voice is only one in a large prophetic chorus. Although human resource developers, career counselors, technology consultants, science advisers and economic forecasters may produce widely differing scenarios about the future world of work, there are some commonalities. One theme--in the rush of social forecasts, amid new job descriptions that range from trout stream builder to nuclear magnatron resonator reader--is their common admonition to “stay flexible.”

Says Georgia Tech engineering professor Alan Porter: “Expect the nature of work to change abruptly in the next 25 years.” Porter, writing about “Work in the New Information Age,” envisions dramatic employment upheavals as advanced technologies replace workers. He predicts such innovations as “The Autoburger,” a fully automated fast-food dispensary something like McDonald’s but without human workers. Also “The Doctor,” a computer that diagnoses and dispenses health care without benefit of human medical personnel.

In fact, the rate of technological change has created its own new career: the “technology tracker,” an expert hired by large businesses to spot innovations that might otherwise be missed by the company. Herb Halbrecht, whose Stamford, Conn., firm specializes in technology-related research, said the need has arisen because “it is no longer feasible for large organizations to stay on top of what’s happening.”

Dr. Marvin Cetron, a leading technological forecaster, looks at the year 2000 and predicts that the work week will be 32 hours, that in 75% of American households both spouses will work (the current estimate is 51%) and that “the only job a woman won’t be holding is Catholic priest.”

Cetron is president of Forecasting International Ltd. of Arlington, Va. and co-author (with Owen Davies, science editor of Omni magazine) of the new book, “The Great Job Shakeout: Where to Work After the Crash” (Simon & Schuster).

“We have done an in-depth, quantitative look at the types of jobs we can expect in the future, what kind of equipment we will be using,” he said. Speaking by phone from his office, Cetron rattled off rapid-fire statistics on the turn-of-the-20th-Century workforce.

“In 1980, we had 67% of the labor population working in the service sector. By 2000 it will be 88%. Some of these people will service things that already exist, like our houses, our cars, our air conditioners.”

But the bulk of the service jobs, and the cutting-edge careers, will be in information, he said. College students of the future will be studying enzyme research, hydrospace (exploration of the ocean depths), genetic engineering, bionics, robot engineers. “These will be good jobs in the future.”

Another key category, requiring about two years of college education, will be an area Cetron calls “high-tech voc-ed”--vocational education with a very high-tech gloss. “We’re talking about robot technicians, laser technicians, computer-aided design technicians, hazardous waste disposal technicians.”

Rehab Technicians

He foresees careers for housing rehabilitation technicians who will use new materials such as plastics and plexiglass to make the exterior of a building look like brick or stone.

“Another important new field is telemarketing,” he continued. “In 1988 it costs $212 for the average in-person visit made by a salesman. If the visit was done by telephone instead, using the Watts line and 800-numbers, the cost of the average sales call is $17. So telemarketing becomes crucial.”

Although Cetron sees “only a 10% possibility of a recession in 1990 and only a 5% chance of a depression,” he says the worker of tomorrow should be prepared for periodic retraining. “We’re learning so much, and communications are so much better that an idea for a product is almost obsolete before it comes off the drafting board. A person born today can expect to have a new career every 10 years.”

Topping Cetron’s list of pointers for tomorrow’s job-seekers: “Make sure you are computer-literate. You just won’t make it in the job market if you aren’t. It’s going to be as basic a need as driving a car.”

Need for Computers

Psychologist Feingold agrees that technology is a key factor in new careers. (“Hardly any business can survive today without using computers.”) But he sees a proliferation of new jobs being created by other changes in society, many of them demographic.

For instance, Feingold said, there are now about 250,000 people--many of them social workers--employed as divorce mediators, attempting to stem the growing divorce rate. And when a veteran’s hospital in Pennsylvania decided that long-term patients were happier if they could keep a dog or cat, the position of “pet therapist” was created on the hospital staff.

“And look at the whole issue of the environment,” he continued. “Now that big business is starting to realize it needs to do something about the tremendous pollution problems, all sorts of new careers are arising, such as waste manager and waste technician--we now have a billion-dollar industry where nothing existed before.

“As new problems evolve, new jobs arise to meet the needs.”

Feingold--who has a book due out titled, “Careers Today, Tomorrow and the 21st Century and Beyond”--is resolutely optimistic about future job openings.

Colonies in Space

“I think we will have colonies in space, and within 25 or 30 years there will be tourists going to other colonies. I just got back from Europe, and on the 12-hour flight I was so bored I began to envision a recreation kind of person who could amuse people who were cramped into small quarters for space journeys.”

He thinks that “we will need more lawyers who specialize in space. And there will be jobs for space policemen, space physicians and exo-botanists (involved in growing food in space stations).”

Similarly, he foresees a whole span of ocean industry careers, from mining undersea minerals to farming sea-grown food.

Like most forecasters, Feingold is somewhat transfixed by the growing number of older citizens. He predicts the population by the year 2000 will include 100,000 men and women over the age of 100, necessitating a flock of new health-care specialists.

“Futurists need to be ahead of their time--we are always looking at new ways to change the society. Who’d have thought 20 years ago that we would have robot salespeople? Or radon technicians?”

Telephone Managers

According to Edward Cornish, president of the Washington-based World Future Society, “there is considerable disagreement in our field when we start looking at the future job market.” But Cornish, who recently edited a WFS book on “Careers Tomorrow,” emphasized that the complexity of our society is leading to the development of “thousands of new careers.”

The emerging career of telephone management, for instance. “Telephone equipment has gotten so complicated,” he said in an interview, “the average person can’t deal with it. So the telephone manager was born.”

Cornish recalled he “was talking recently to a guy working for the government and he mentioned casually he would have to see his ethics officer about something. There are people in California who consult on earthquakes. There are people in this country raising llamas and camels. These are new jobs.”

Cornish offered his overview of work in the future:

--”The average job is going to become increasingly higher-tech as the sophistication of equipment keeps increasing.

--”The implication for workers is that they will have to be better trained and more educated.

--”Huge new industries are coming on, such as the cleaning of air, a lot of do-it-yourself medicine systems. I think personal security will be a big industry of the future.

--”There is no reason to believe that the rush of technology is going to slow down in the near future; on the contrary, it may speed up. You see different figures on how often people will change careers: I think the fact is that the technology is changing very rapidly and people have to try to keep up.”

“The year 2000 is not very far away,” Cornish concluded. “I believe that the good jobs will increasingly involve high tech and a high degree of education and, in general, considerable advanced training.

“For those who can keep up, I think the rewards will be great.”