Imagine a job that doesn’t exist yet. A boss that’s an AI. A team-mate working from a base on the Moon. Today, we’re going to look at three jobs that might be waiting for you in 2040 — and the kind of person you can start being today, to be ready for them.
When your parents were at primary school, no-one had heard of an app developer, a YouTuber, or a wind-farm engineer. By the time you finish your education in the 2040s, the same will be true again.
Hands up if you’ve heard a parent or grandparent say that wasn’t even a job when I was your age. Now imagine what your own children will say to you in 2070.
Three jobs from your grandparents’ day. Three jobs from today. Three jobs that might be totally normal by 2040.
By the 2040s, the Moon won’t just be a place to visit — it’ll be a place to work. Buried in the lunar dust at the south pole are billions of tonnes of frozen water and a fuel called helium-3. Both could power Earth’s clean economy and rockets travelling deeper into space.
Some of you might do that work standing on the lunar surface. Others will do it from a desk on Earth, controlling robots 384,000 km away.
Half the world’s coral reefs have already disappeared. By 2040, restoring them will be one of the planet’s biggest jobs: lab-grown coral, 3D-printed reef structures, AI-controlled drones, whole new species being seeded into the seabed by people in submarines.
Some of those people will be British primary-school children today — learning to swim, learning to code, learning to care.
By 2040, the meat in your sandwich might never have been part of an animal. Scientists are already growing real chicken, beef and fish from a few cells in a small lab tank — no farm, no slaughterhouse, almost no land.
By the time you’re 25, this could feed billions of people while giving farmland back to forests. Someone has to design that food, taste-test it, make it work at scale. Why not you?
Here’s what life will cost each month when you’re 25, in 2040 money — with today’s prices shown for comparison. Tap each one to reveal the cost.
Hands up: would you spend more somewhere? Would you cut something? What would YOU choose to live without?
A scientist on the Moon, a reef-restorer underwater, a food engineer in a lab. Different worlds, same way of working. Tap any one to find out what it really means.
Asking "why doesn't this work?" — then trying ten ways to make it work, and one of them does.
Used by all three jobsNo-one fixes a coral reef alone. Or builds a Moon base. Or invents food. The biggest jobs need the biggest teams.
Used by all three jobsSaying what you think — even when it’s scary, even when you’re the youngest, even when you might be wrong.
Used by all three jobsBig jobs take years. Picturing the end and planning the steps is what gets you there.
Used by all three jobsThere’s no wrong answer. The Moon, the ocean, the lab — or something completely different. Hands up — let’s see how the room votes.
From every single one of you. Between now and the end of the school year. Tap "next" to reveal each one.
You won’t know what your job is yet. Nobody does. What you can do is build the kind of person who’s ready for whatever job is waiting. Curious. Brave. Kind. Good with people. Good at trying.
So — what hard thing will you try this week?