Investors to kids: Focus on tech
Jobs in finance are no longer best future option, analysts say
Graduating high school students will be best off pursuing a career in technology rather than finance, investors say.
For soon-to-be adults, tech is the smartest route despite recent layoffs at Meta Platforms, Amazon.com and Alphabet, the latest MLIV Pulse survey with 678 respondents suggests. Tech savvy is seen as ever more important in a world increasingly influenced by digital platforms and artificial intelligence.
“The highest-paying jobs were so clearly in the finance sector for two or three decades, and now tech is really competitive with that — they’re kind of neck and neck,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president of the human resources consulting firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas. Even with the rise of AI, Challenger expects tech and finance to remain among the most lucrative careers for the next 20 or 30 years. “I don’t see that going away,” he said.
Some 52% of 556 professional investors said technology is the way to go for high school students. Among 122 retail investors, 48% voted for tech, according to the poll.
Recent hiring trends support the results. While the current downturn has hit tech and Silicon Valley startups hard, recruiters in traditional industries — from automakers to the federal government — have rushed to snap up laidoff tech talent and new grads. These days, every company is a tech company, as the saying goes.
Part of the perception that the grass is greener in Silicon Valley also stems from the way tech has transformed the inner workings of Wall Street. “There are lots of people that have brilliant financial minds, and yet they can’t put into effect a trading strategy without relying on serious programmers to come in and actually implement it because it’s moved past human beings in some ways,” Challenger said. “I can see why they feel that threat.”
Investors have a different recommendation for kindergarten graduates this year. Nearly 40% of respondents said those children will be best off with a career in health care. Jobs in medical fields often involve much more human-to-human interaction, which many
believe AI is unlikely to ever fully replace. Retail investors were slightly more enthusiastic about the health care — it was a top pick for 41%. Among professional investors, 38% chose medical services, according to the poll.
A recent Goldman Sachs report estimated that some 300 million full-time jobs worldwide are expected to soon be affected by AI automation.
Demographic trends also support the idea that becoming a doctor or a nurse will be a wiser choice for the youngest generation: Economists forecast significant demand for health care workers as the global population ages.
As for the potential impact of AI on Wall Street, only 12% said finance would be the best career option for today’s kindergartners. While a previous MLIV Pulse survey found that most finance professionals were confident AI won’t replace them in the next three years, that confidence appears to falter over a longer time horizon.