6 High-Paying Careers of the Future

I was reading through an interview in Fortune recently where they talked to Thomas Frey, the author of Communicating with the Future. They asked him what jobs he thought were going to grow fastest in the coming years. His answers were interesting enough that I wanted to make a note of them here.

1. Logistics Manager

The short version: they use software to track how goods move and figure out how to make it faster and cheaper.

Why he picked it: Every company wants to cut costs and speed up delivery. The US Department of Labor was predicting 26% annual growth for this role by 2020. Frey also made the point that logistics will eventually mean more than just delivering packages—think drones, self-driving cars, and defense. Once things start moving autonomously, someone still has to manage the flow.

2. Ethical Hacker

A hacker hired by a company to break into their own systems before someone else does.

Why he picked it: The average salary was already crossing the $90,000 mark. The interesting part, though, is the boundary. Some people worry about how easily an "ethical" hacker can cross the line. The privacy versus transparency debate is not going anywhere, and as long as there is value in the data, the people who know how to protect (or steal) it will be in demand.

3. Actuary

People who turn risk into numbers using math and statistics. They usually work for insurance companies, banks, or governments.

Why he picked it: It is a high-paying field (average salary around $87,000) that is still growing. More importantly, he expects actuary skills to become useful outside of insurance. For example, as healthcare gets more complicated, pharmaceutical companies will likely need them to model large-scale risks.

4. Epidemiologist

They figure out where diseases come from, how they spread, and how to stop them.

Why he picked it: The projected growth was huge—up to 35.8% annually leading up to 2020. What caught my eye was how he connected this to technology. He expects IoT (Internet of Things) and micro-sensors to eventually help track early signs of disease. It sounds like science fiction now, but it's not impossible to imagine.

5. Front-End Engineer

This one hits close to home. We are the people who build the parts of the web that users actually see, touch, and get frustrated by.

Why he picked it: Demand was expected to grow 22%, which was noticeably higher than the 14% projected for general software developers. Frey pointed out something true: customer interaction on the web often decides whether a company succeeds or fails. If the interface makes people want to leave, the backend doesn't matter.

6. Food Chemist

These are the people working out how to make food taste better, last longer, or have a better texture.

Why he picked it: 3D printing. He thinks one day we might just load ingredient cartridges into a printer and press a button for dinner. For that to happen, someone needs to design the cartridges. Between space exploration (NASA is already researching this) and everyday convenience, the people who engineer food are going to have plenty of work ahead of them.