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In the next ten years, a demographic shift will change the face of the work market.
Photo: Bigstock.
The work market, as any other market moves by the offer and demand. It is clear that in the near future, this demand will be centered on elderly care.
Ken Dychtwald, CEO for the research and consulting firm Agewave, explains the root of this trend.
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“Demographically, we’ll be facing hard realities in the next five to ten years. There’ll be a handful of profound demographic shifts — among them, a boomer generation with fewer children than their parents — that will alter our capacity for caregiving, that will create great need and demand for alternative solutions.”
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs in the caregiving industry will produce 750,000 new positions by 2026. On the other hand, in México, more than 12 million people are older than 60, and it is estimated that the number will rise to a quarter of the population by 2050.
As this article is written, Mexico is in need of ten times more geriatric specialists than they have right now. The vacant to fill rille up to 2770, and they will near more as time goes by and more people reaches old age.
Technology and humanity, a critical balance
Technology and resourcefulness will play a fundamental role in the advancement of senior adults’ care. In the next few years, this services will start to be provided more at home. Tools like apps and sensors will help to improve the process of caregiving, making it more precise. It will also open up opportunities for collaboration for professional caregivers, doctors, nurses, and developers.
The next step is to make smarter and more sensible use of this technology, for this, the workforce will need data analysis experts that specialize in caregiving applications. There has being a great intention in the field to have a more strategic approach. Instead of register all the patient’s movements and collect every piece of information, new tools will focus only on the data that constitutes a red flag, or an unusual situation that requires extra attention. Every new idea to improve elderly care will go hand in hand with the need for professionals to enable them.
The role of therapy and power skills
Along with the population of people over 60, the number of patients with ailments and diseases associated with advanced age will grow. The demand for therapists, psychiatrists, and pharmaceutical specialists capable of developing treatments is going to raise in equal proportion of this demographic change.
Is necessary to boost the training of professionals in these three fields and integrate power skills in the curriculum. Caregiving tasks require a high level of observation, emotional intelligence, perception, empathy, and communication. On this field, the most efficient workers are the ones who have these skills, which enable them to build a balanced and cooperative relationship with their patients.
In the next 20 years, the workforce will be built almost entirely by Millennials and Generation Z. During this period, one of the best career decisions is to seek education to work in the caregiving industry.
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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 
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Sofía García-Bullé
Sofía García-Bullé
Sofía García-Bullé