16 Jun 2026
Roughly 60% of the jobs people hold today are in job types that didn't exist in 1940.
Solar photovoltaic electrician. Circuit layout designer. Software applications engineer. None of those could have gone on a careers form in advance.
David Autor & his team at MIT put the number on it, tracking 80 years of new job titles in the US census: about 6 out of 10 of us are in work that's genuinely new.
When I worry about what's left for the next generation, this is one of the facts I come back to.
The economy keeps inventing whole new categories of work, not just dealing us a smaller hand from the same deck.
And it's not only blue-collar churn: over 70% of professional jobs are in roles that didn't exist in 1940 either.
The catch: nobody can name the next categories in advance. That's genuinely uncomfortable when it's your kid asking what to study.
So I've stopped trying to pick the safe job for them, and started backing the safe habits: get good at learning fast, building things, working with people, asking better questions... and learn to leverage AI.
If a 15-year-old asked you what to study for a job that doesn't exist yet, what would you tell them?