Determining a career path can be a daunting decision for anyone at any age. Amazon has partnered with Gallup to create the Careers of the Future Index (CFI) to help young adults choose their best career. The CFI combines the most recent career-level data on income, job growth and demand, and resistance to automation, to convey the economic strengths and weaknesses of various career paths and highlight careers that both pay well and are likely to be available to applicants now and in the future.
The CFI report and free, interactive database is for students, parents, school counselors, and anyone curious about exploring viable job opportunities. The CFI scores all 529 occupations used by the U.S. Census Bureau to classify work, with higher scores generally indicating higher pay, a high and growing number of job openings, and/or better prospects that the job will remain a viable option in the face of technological advances. The CFI is the first comprehensive career tool to include a career’s capacity to withstand automation, and the first to provide users with context on racial and gender proportionality—diversity statistics detailing how representative those employed in a given area are in relation to the U.S. population.
Amazon Future Engineer, our global philanthropic computer-science education program, commissioned the CFI to provide young adults and their advisers with transparent and data-driven guidance about the economic prospects of jobs in the U.S.
View and download the full report.
"Millions of American students face two important decisions every year: What career do they want to pursue, and what's the best way to get there? Grappling with an abundance of available career paths, students can use this data-driven tool to make the best possible career decision—one that provides them satisfaction, job security, and longevity," said Victor Reinoso, global director of philanthropic education initiatives at Amazon. "Young adults are overlooking promising career options. While some jobs might be popular now, they might not be in-demand in a decade, or they could be highly disrupted by new emerging technologies. Our goal is to provide students and career counselors across the country with a way to make informed decisions in a rapidly changing labor market."
The CFI findings offer new insights to educators and industry stakeholders seeking to help equip students from all backgrounds with the tools they will need to obtain jobs of the future, while successfully navigating a challenging economic climate. Here are three top takeaways from the CFI:
