It's 2026. You lost your cashier job five years ago, when Wal-Mart Stores switched to automatic checkout. A job at the post office lasted only a few years, since no one sends mail anymore. Then came the avian flu, decimating populations around the world. Your new office job shut down because everyone was afraid of getting sick.
What's next? Be a quarantine enforcer! These crucial public servants patrol the streets in quarantined neighborhoods, ensuring no one leaves, except in a hearse. With your gas mask and bio-hazard suit, you wait for a signal from blighted households before calling the morgue. No matter how the economy changes, at least one skill will always be in demand: dealing with the dead.
This apocalyptic scenario may never come to pass, and may be just as unlikely as a utopia where everyone has a sinecure in the so-called Knowledge Economy.
But one thing is clear: In two decades, your job probably won't exist, at least not in the same form. "I think there's going to be an enormous shift of occupations," says futurist Alvin Toffler, author of Future Shock and Revolutionary Wealth. "Most jobs are going to change. They'll survive, but they'll change."
It's hard to think of an industry that's not undergoing upheaval. From newspaper publishers to moviemakers, media firms are adjusting to the digital age. The Big Three auto companies -- General Motors, Ford Motor and DaimlerChrysler -- must transform themselves to compete in the global marketplace. Pharmaceutical giants that focus on blockbuster drugs are languishing, while biotech upstarts with tightly targeted medicines are on the rise.
Meanwhile, computers continue to take over the world. Machines will learn to perform most translation services, eventually making language experts unnecessary, Toffler says. Robotic aircraft will put fighter pilots out
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