Jobs on the Rise – COVID-19 Trends
‘Insights from LinkedIn’ recently released a report highlighting the seismic shifts that have taken place in the job market due to COVID-19. The report is titled ‘Jobs on the Rise in 2021’ and it details the career categories with the highest year-over-year job growth from April 2020 to October 2020.
LinkedIn data scientists found three major career categories for COVID-19 era job growth – medical (driven by the elevated health needs surrounding the pandemic), digital transformation (resulting from the world economy moving increasingly online), and remote work (growing from the need to socially distance). In each category, LinkedIn highlights the most in-demand job titles and skills.
In comparing LinkedIn’s data to our own, I was impressed by the fact that Couragion’s K-12 students seem to instinctively understand the job market shifts. Our data shows students more frequently selecting these in-demand job categories, demonstrating that they are altering their career interests in line with the market changes. Here are three examples:
Medical – LinkedIn reported 230K current job openings for medical professionals with Nurses as one of the top three in-demand job titles and important skills being patient education, inpatient care, and electronic medical records knowledge. Within the Couragion app, we saw student interest in the Nursing career grow by 111% during the pandemic. After viewing Couragion’s ‘Director of Nursing’ career, students commented that they liked how the job entailed helping others and working directly with people.
Digital Transformation – LinkedIn predicts that 150M jobs will be added to this category over the next five years! A key title in this category, Data Scientist, grew by 35% and the related skills required for the job were knowledge of Tableau, SQL, and R. Over the last year, Couragion also saw major growth in student interest for this career, with 123% more students opting to learn about Couragion’s ‘Director of Business Intelligence’ job. Students cited the following aspects of the career as positives: working with data, creativity in the job, great pay, and that it is perceived as being a ‘cool’ job.
Remote Work - LinkedIn found that 15% of the job openings advertised on their site are now for remote work. Loan and Mortgage job titles were one of the major drivers of this increase – experiencing a 58.6% year-over-year growth. Top skills for this area included refinancing, mortgage lending, and Federal Housing Authority (FHA) knowledge. Couragion found that student interest in our ‘Loan Officer’ career grew by 121% throughout the pandemic. The positive job aspects, mentioned most by students, were the ability to work with math/numbers and helping people in the community to meet their goals.
Insights such as these can help those of us in education to pivot with the workforce trends. How are you adapting your career education in light of the COVID-19 pandemic? Couragion’s app, with broad coverage of the most in-demand careers, can help. Contact us at info@couragion.com to learn more. To review additional job titles, skills, and COVID-19 related trends, check out LinkedIn’s full report here.
