Member of Parliament for South East St Ann, Lisa Hanna, kept it real as she addressed the 2021 graduating class at the Montego Bay High School earlier this week.

Hanna explained to the graduates that in past times, parents had sought to persuade their children to choose careers in medicine, teaching and law, viewing professions in these areas as ones in which graduates would be sure to find work.

However, Hanna said that concept of “safe professions” are a thing of the past, as she pointed out that the top ten in demand jobs that exist today, did not even exist ten years ago.

“Right now artificial intelligence is 90 per cent accurate in diagnosing some lung cancers. And so MIT and other hospitals around the world are looking at how AI can actually help the medical profession,” said Hanna as she sought to explain how automation, technology and artificial intelligence are and will continue to change the job landscape.

“This is information that you need to start looking into. And you have to start now in order to jump the hurdle of adversity you have to be armed with data,” she added.

Hanna shared that it was necessary for parents, teachers and school leaders to evolve their collective thinking to be “more strategic” as this was critical in helping to guide children into making good career choices.

Your generation and Millennials are not like that, you want everything to be going on simultaneously, so you want to work and enjoy your life at the same time, and that’s fine. But there are some real reality checks. The kinds of jobs that you’re going to be going after you have to start looking for them from now, because the top 10 in demand jobs that exist today did not exist 10 years ago, most of them now are in healthcare, Hanna said.

“You also have to recognise that you’re competing, because it is so digital and the world is so digital now. You’re not only competing for jobs amongst yourself, the rest of the world is competing with you because you can actually work from home. So the beauty about it is that they can hire Jamaican, or they can hire someone from China. But you have to recognise that- that is where the world is at,” Hanna added.