Evolution of jobs Across the Globe

Our lives are made up of rapidly evolving moments in which change and reinvention are anchored in every segment of society, and this does not exclude the world of work. No sooner have we become accustomed to one reality than we are immediately thrown into a new one. Workplaces are changing, that's a fact.

If the television, telephone or cinema were among the hallmarks of 20th century society, the picture began to change in the 1990s. Suddenly the internet arrived, and slowly but surely this new thing – this new way of connecting with someone on the other side of the world – became our most normal way of life, an integral part of our everyday lives.

And not even two decades into the new millennium, in the 21st century, things are already moving on, and much faster than ever before. A few decades ago, for example, it took a company more than 50 years to go through a cycle from birth to death. Even if it was clear that a particular company would cease to exist, this was a process that took a long time, perhaps three, five or seven years. Nowadays, it can happen overnight.

People have also been trained to hold the same position their whole lives. If your parents were trained to work in a bank, they probably held the same job in that bank for most of their adult lives. But with the changing times and the fact that everything moves so much faster these days, the job field has changed too. The internet has enabled a real evolution – it has rapidly expanded the range of opportunities available in every corner. Presumably on one condition – the sacred connection to the Internet.

So how have we evolved? What are some of the latest and hottest jobs currently trending around the world?

Blogging: Writing and video, a curious case of self-employment

Forget the library as the place we used to go to soak up new knowledge by reading books. Libraries have changed themselves. As venues, they can act as a kind of co-working space where one person, possibly a blog owner, quickly reviews a book before preparing a post for their readership online. But that doesn't have to be the case.

The only requirements for this particular job are a fast internet connection, a video camera and a lot of vigour. Bloggers are the first port of call when it comes to food, books, destinations, make-up trends and more. People would go online to discuss virtually any topic. With this in mind, some content creators became masters of the specific topics they wrote about.

Initiatives such as TripAdvisor have cast a shadow over the traditional travel documentaries that provide information about exciting sights in foreign countries. Sites like Brain Pickings offer in-depth reviews of content and books that you would never normally pick up yourself. Running a web project in itself has become a career that people have created for themselves, and as it turns out, it's lucrative enough to do from home!

Freelance activity

Even if you do not run your own web project, there's a good chance that you can work as a freelance copywriter for a client. But the range of jobs available on one of the existing freelancing platforms is by no means limited to writers or bloggers.

Employers today will consider hiring a freelancer for almost any task that can be outsourced or delegated via an online arrangement. Some of the most lucrative opportunities are for programmers, graphic designers, photographers and virtual assistants, to name a few. The internet acts as an umbrella for this entire online ecosystem of millions of employers and employees contracted through freelancing platforms.

Right now, statistics show that at least 50 million Americans are working independently. According to Upwork, freelancers are expected to make up the majority of workers in the U.S. in less than a decade, with nearly 50% of millennials already working as freelancers.

The number of people engaging in the world of freelancing is growing accordingly in Iceland.

From inventors to entrepreneurs: Einstein to Zuckerbergjobs in transition

As progress has been made in all areas, the profiles we praise in public have also evolved. In the past, it was personalities like Einstein who helped us think about the laws of physics and gave us a deeper understanding of the universe. Today, it is personalities like Mark Zuckerberg, an entrepreneur who has changed society by helping social media to take off. Today, on platforms like Facebook, there are no longer any limits to how we can connect online. And while managing and administering social media sites has become a job in its own right, don’t forget that there are 25,000 people working on the other side of your favorite social media site, keeping Facebook running (and creating work for you if you are a social media manager).

Today, more than ever, it seems that there are no limits to what we can do and how much we can earn when we engage online, be it with a blog, an entrepreneurial idea or something else. And Iceland is also part of this new exciting world of work. Iceland may still be a country known primarily for its natural beauty and as a popular tourist destination, but Icelanders have also used their intellect and intuition to create many excellent companies, including amazing homegrown startups such as CCP, Össur, Marel, Plain Vanilla and many more.

Icelandic startups are thriving – and if you are looking for a small but no less significant Silicon Valley in the north of the Atlantic, don’t forget that Iceland has created jobs for its people and abroad.