The ongoing coronavirus pandemic continues to change the way we work even two years later – and because of the crisis, jobs that hardly existed five years ago are now some of the most in-demand positions throughout the United States.
On Tuesday, LinkedIn released its 2022 Jobs on the Rise list highlighting the 25 fastest-growing positions over the last five years, based on the job titles with highest growth rates on its website between January 2017 and July 2021.
The jobs at the top of the list such as vaccine specialist, customer marketing manager and machine learning engineer have seen hiring skyrocket as a result of the pandemic. These jobs have seen "hundreds to thousands of new hires over the last five years," according to LinkedIn, with some jobs, like vaccine specialist, going from almost no jobs in 2017 to having hundreds of open positions in 2021.
"If you asked me two years ago to guess what the top job in 2022 would be, I wouldn't have said 'vaccine specialist' in a million years," Dan Roth, the editor-in-chief and vice president at LinkedIn tells CNBC Make It.
Other tech roles have become popular because the pandemic has increased our dependence on the internet. "Several of these positions, especially customer marketing managers and user experience researchers, are helping companies figure out how to reach their customers better online," Roth notes.
Some positions have risen in demand for non-pandemic reasons: "Diversity and inclusion manager," which ranks No. 2 on LinkedIn's list, became a sought-after role after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, which reignited outrage against racism and police brutality. "The demand from employees for having an inclusive workforce that reflects the actual world we live in is here to stay," Roth says.
Twenty-four of the 25 positions on LinkedIn's list offer remote or flexible job opportunities, another trend that has been accelerated by the pandemic. In the past, Roth says it was "extremely rare" to see such a high volume of remote jobs, but employers are responding to calls for flexibility to attract and retain talent in a tight labor market.
Here are the top 10 fastest-growing jobs in 2022, according to LinkedIn; you can read the full list of the top 25 jobs here.
