Dinosaurs, the dodo and dumbphones have one
thing in common: they’re gone and they’re never coming back.
But the same could be true of your job. Thanks
to the relentless march of progress, some jobs and industries are
on an unstoppable decline.
If you are working as one of the following,
you might want to use those SkillsFuture credits and train yourself
for another job before it’s too late.
Unless you’re already a multi-millionaire star
agent with an entire team under your wing, your life as a property
agent is going to get a lot tougher in the coming years.
Even without taking into account the
years-long property slump that has been brought about by the
cooling measures and has been eating into agents’ fees, property
agents’ jobs are threatened by the fact that Singaporeans are now
more and more inclined to DIY their own property transactions.
Thanks to the ubiquity of property listing
websites, buyers and sellers no longer need agents to link them up
with interested parties.
And now that HDB’s Resale Portal has been launched,
agents will no longer be needed to handle the bulk of the paperwork
and timeline monitoring in HDB transactions.
Driving a taxi has long been middle-aged
Singaporeans’ back up plan after getting retrenched from their
jobs.
But right now, you yourself probably no longer
take taxis thanks to Grab and Uber.
Competition from the ride sharing apps has forced
more taxi drivers to give up their jobs or go over to the dark side by joining Grab and Uber
themselves.
For those who don’t have a taxi driver’s
vocational licence, it is no longer worth the time, effort and
money to obtain one when you can become a Grab or Uber driver in
less time. (Grab claims you can get the Private Hire Car Driver’s
Vocational Licence in 3-5 weeks, while a Taxi Driver’s Vocational
Licence typically takes 6 weeks.)
It’s surprising quite a few travel agencies
are still (barely) hanging on, because their services are about as
obsolete as MSN Messenger.
Singaporeans are now very used to doing their
own travel research online and booking their own accommodation,
flight tickets and activities independently. Not only can you find
better deals on the Internet, they’re cheaper too, as you won’t
have to pay a cut of the agents’ fees.
The struggle is real for many travel
agencies in Singapore, with a few high profile
closuresthat have left travellers in a
lurch.
That doesn’t mean the travel industry is
completely dead though, as online agencies like Zuji seem to be
doing well. But the traditional model of brick and mortar agencies
who put together packages for their clients is one that will be
soon laid to rest.
Singapore aims to become a pioneer in driverless
technology, and based on the driving standards on local
roads, I can’t say I’m complaining.
But there will be some casualties. Because
once driverless buses become the norm in Singapore, there
are going to be a lot of retrenchments.
The vast majority of Singapore’s public bus drivers
being foreign, this may not be such a big problem for the local
workforce, but career drivers might want to consider looking for
work in other areas instead.
Are you
worried that your job will be become obsolete? Tell us why in the
comments.
The post 4 Jobs That
Might Go Extinct in Singapore in the Near Future appeared
first on the MoneySmart
blog.