The trends are clear, more and more work that was previously done by humans are being shifted to automated systems. Factories with thousands of workers has been replaced by highly efficient facilities containing industrial robots and a few human operators, bank tellers by online banking, most parts of any logistics chain by different types of automatic sorting, moving, and sending mechanisms. Offices are run by less and less people as we're handling and processing fewer and fewer physical documents. In any area less people than before are needed to do the same work as before. The world is becoming automated.
These developments are not only here to stay - they are accelerating. Most of what is done by humans today could easily be done by computers in a near future. I would personally guess that most professions existing today could be replaced by affordable automated equivalents within 30 years. My question is: What jobs will be the last ones to go, and why?
Often education is pointed out as safe bet to ensure being needed in the future, and while that is true its not the whole story. First of all, in basically all parts of the world the fraction of the population with an academic degree is growing fast. Higher education will probably not be as good as a differentiator in the future. Second, while degrees in the fields hot in the future is hot in the future there is no guarantee that the degrees hot today will be of any use later on. Third, there is a misconception that highly theoretical tasks done by skilled experts will be among the last to go. But due to their theoretical nature such tasks are fairly easy represent virtually.
Of course as we progress technologically new doors are opening and the hottest job year 2030 might not even exist today. Any suggestions?
In my mind the question comes down to what do humans value that other humans do that will be hard to do or hard to value if it comes from a machine?
Art in all forms. Live music performance. Painting, personal photography. Interior design. Even industrial design. For a long time the parts of this that can be automated will be used by experts to improve the quality of their performances.
SImilarly with engineering, I think it will be a long time before the tools replace the tool-bearer. Software will be easier and easier to write because the level at which it is being written will be higher and higher, and more and more (exponentially) cpucycles will be used to compile the software, but that "prime mover" putting it all in place will exist for a very long time. Similarly when math is automated there will still be physicists and mathematicians using the tools to develop theories, they will just develop them faster and more accurately than they used to.
The ownership idea is strong and will take stand you well for a long while (generations more I think). In the same way that patents and copyrights fade and expire, I would expect an increasingly large portion of basic production to be deprivatized in some fashion or another. When there is no human input into changing productivity, no human input in to managing the deployment of capital, it will simply not make sense to attribute that capital (and its earnings) to some particular owner anymore. HOW that transition takes place may be wierd and slow, but natural selection dictates that it will take place in some form in some facets of the human world, and that its greater efficiency over private ownership will make it grow.
But in the mean time, the arts, high end of science/math/engineering.
As atucker mentioned, personal servants will still be in demand, the more personal the better. The "oldest profession" may also be one of the last surviving. Sycophants, courtiers, jesters ...