3 Reasons For Young People to be Optimistic About Their Careers

In 2025, careers advice for teenagers can often feel a little gloomy, not to mention confused. On the one hand you’re told to work hard and think about the best careers for the future. On the other you’ll hear concerns about AI replacing jobs and it’s easy to wonder if a degree is even worth it.

While we can’t answer all of these questions, here at Career Navig8r we do feel that the careers of tomorrow may be brighter than they might at first seem. Why do we think that?

1. Degrees Mean Less Than They Used To

For years now, people have been complaining about the gradual devaluing of degrees. More and more people are graduating from universities while employers are paying less and less attention to those qualifications. 

That’s not to say degrees are meaningless. If you want to become a doctor or an engineer they’re vital. On the other hand, if you’re looking to enter a creative field, then a degree is only as useful as the skills and knowledge you pick up along the way.

This, believe it or not, is a good thing.

In 2025 you can learn almost anything online and if you can build a project that proves your skillset, then an employer will look on that favourably.

What this means is that young people are no longer required to spend three extra years in higher education in order to reach their career goals. Furthermore, it makes it far easier to be flexible in your career in the long run, no longer bound by a decision you made before you knew anything about the job market.

The majority of careers advice for young adults focuses on how to decide on the right degree but in a world where higher education isn’t the deciding factor, you have many more years to shape your career.

 2. Access to a Global Market

The best careers for the next ten years will likely be both independent and online, and there’s a reason for that. In the past, if you wanted to start a small company, your market was always limited by geography. Now that is no longer the case.

If you’ve got the drive to build something yourself, the online space is teeming with opportunities for you to tap into a global market. That means you have a potentially limitless customer base depending on your product, all accessible from right here at your desk.

As a young person looking to the future, it might seem like your opportunities to work with large companies are getting smaller but your opportunities to work independently, making your living, your way, are greater than ever before. So, whether you choose to take an industry job or go solo with an online business, you should know that the gatekeepers are gone, and it’s time for you to show the world what you can do.

3. AI is Make or Break

Okay, so let’s wrap up by talking about the big elephant in the room. Is AI going to make all white collar jobs redundant?

Many companies and shareholders have invested a lot of money into AI tools and the results are certainly remarkable – and in some ways concerning. Jobs have already been replaced and will likely continue to be into the future.

On the other hand, quite a few companies have tried to replace jobs with AI only to ultimately rehire their workforce. Furthermore, for those paying attention, it’s pretty clear that the goalposts have a tendency to shift on claims about AI.

While the technology has certainly improved over the last few years and will continue to improve, the major limitations of reliability and broad-scope understanding remain firmly in place.

AI invents facts that aren’t true, AI makes decisions without an understanding of the full human context of those decisions. Even where it is used, it needs massive oversight and, marketing claims aside, there is no concrete evidence that this is a limitation the technology will be able to overcome.

A lot of money has been spent to try and convince you that AI will take your job, that doesn’t mean it’s the case. The truth is we don’t know if AI will replace the jobs of the future but for many of these investors, the money they’ve put in is more than they can afford to lose.

Furthermore, if AI does meaningfully reach the point where it can replace humans then, in many ways, there will no longer be a job market. What’s next for humanity then? Labour will have been replaced and we’ll be firmly in Utopian territory. That might not seem particularly likely but this is, in effect, what many investors are gambling on.

All of this to say that nobody knows the future of AI and that includes the companies who build it but it probably won’t spell the end of the world.

The best career advice we can offer to any 17 year olds out there right now is not to worry. Work hard, focus on your passions, and always be on the lookout for opportunities.