1 Chapter 1: A Diverse Skillet Featuring Communications Is Key to Survival

The picture painted by this insight into what employers are looking for tells us plenty about what we must do about our skillset to have a fighting chance in the fierce competition for jobs: diversify it and keep our communication skills at a high level. Gone are the days when someone would do one or two jobs throughout their entire career. Rather, if the current job-hopping trend continues, “Canadians can expect to hold roughly 15 jobs in their careers” (Harris, 2014) and the future for many will involve gigging for several employers at once rather than for one (Mahdawi, 2017).

Futurists tell us that the “gig economy” will evolve alongside advances in AI (artificial intelligence) and automation that will phase out jobs of a routine and mechanical nature with machines. Artificial intelligence is unlikely to be a strong competitor for fashion jobs because they require high levels of creativity, problem-solving and advanced-digital skills, as well as social intelligence. The apparel industry is a powerful economic force, there is no denying that the fashion industry is changing.  According to a survey by McKinsey & Co. (2019), executives described the industry as becoming digital, and fast. They also identified challenges facing the industry, such as: (1) dealing with volatility, uncertainty, and shifts in the global economy, and (2) the need to achieve greater sustainability and transparency. These results make a clear case for a major that can meet the labor demands of a growing industry by producing graduates with data-analysis and decision-making skills, fashion awareness and business acumen, and global awareness.

While the pace of change in the fashion industry is remarkable, many of the occupations it encompasses are relatively immune to replacement by automated processes and artificial intelligence. According to landmark research by Frey and Osborne (2013), art directors, fashion designers, pattern makers, and purchasing managers have among the lowest probabilities of being replaced by computerized processes across all detailed occupation groups in the U.S. Thus, graduates will be well-positioned to take advantage of new job openings in the coming decades.

Indeed, current predictions from the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship at Ryerson University in Toronto are that 42% of Canadian jobs—especially low-paying ones—are at high risk of being affected by automation by the mid-2020s to 2030s. Some of those will be eliminated outright, but most will be redefined by requiring new skillsets that cannot be automated so easily. The 36% of jobs at low risk are those that require either advanced soft skills and emotional intelligence featured in roles such as managers, nurses, and teachers (Lamb, 2016), creativity, or advanced STEM skills in developing and servicing those technologies (Mahdawi, 2017; Riddell, 2017).

• Revenue in the Fashion segment amounts to the US $718,027m in 2020.
• Revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2020-2024) of 8.4%, resulting in a market volume of US$991,645m by 2024.
• The market’s largest segment is Apparel with a market volume of US$460,255m in 2020.
• In global comparison, most revenue is generated in China (US$348,700m in 2020).

Since the future of work is a series of careers and juggling several trends at once, communication skills are key to transitioning between them all. The gears of every career switch and new job added are greased by the soft skills that help convince your new employers and clients to hire you, or, if you strike out on your own, convince your new partners and employees to work with or for you. Career changes certainly aren’t the signs of catastrophe that they perhaps used to be; usually, they mark moves up the pay scale so that you end your working life where you should: far beyond where you started in terms of both your role and pay bracket.

You simply cannot make those career and gig transitions without communication skills. In other words, you will be stuck on the first floor of entry-level gigging unless you have the soft skills to lift you up and shop you around. A nurse who graduates with a diploma and enters the workforce quilting together a patchwork of part-time gigs in hospitals, care homes, clinics, and schools, for instance, won’t still be exhausted by this juggling act if they have the soft skills to rise to decision-making positions in any one of those places. Though the job will be technologically assisted in ways that it never had been before with machines handling the menial dirty work, the fundamental human need for human interaction and decision-making will keep that nurse employed and upwardly mobile. The more advanced your communication skills develop as you find your way through the gig economy, the further up the pay scale you’ll climb.