Automation has been the labor market’s boogeyman for years. Now the pandemic has created a sense of urgency for workers to uplevel their skills to avoid becoming irrelevant.

As The New York Times reports, middle-class jobs typically require some digital proficiency, even for jobs not considered tech work. As of May, about half of US workers were working remotely — up from only 15% in the Before Times — and automation was already becoming more prevalent in fields ranging from retail to health care to warehouse operations.

Tech is poised to take jobs, but we still need managers

The need for workers with advanced skills is so great that members of Congress have reached across the aisle to draft the Skills Renewal Act, which would award up to $4k in tax credits to newly unemployed workers seeking training in high-demand areas. 

Last year Amazon began “upskilling” employees in anticipation of automating simpler tasks. Other businesses like Exelon, a utility company, implemented a training approach called “co-investing,” which means the company funds in-house training, but employees complete it in their off hours.

So, what training opportunities should people look for?

Data scientists at LinkedIn recently analyzed millions of job listings to determine which ones are in demand, pay a livable wage, and require skills that can be obtained through remote learning.

According to our research, the top 5 meeting all those criteria, ranked by number of LinkedIn job listings, are:

• Sales representatives (~144k job listings on LinkedIn)
• Software developer (~125k listings)
• Project manager (~91k listings)
• Customer service specialist (~90k listings)
• Data analyst (~21k listings)

What skills are becoming more important in your industry — and where do you see the most hiring happening? Reply to this email, or drop me a line at [email protected].

Listen up, parents: Covering your kids in bubble wrap for their personal safety is so last decade. 

This year, if you really want to protect the young’uns, you better pony up $100 for a WalkingPod. 

Pod save… come again? 

The startup Under the Weather originally floated onto the scene in 2010 to help with bad weather. If you’re at a sports game and it starts raining, why not ditch the poncho in favor of a Game Day Pod? 

But Input reports that Under the Weather is pivoting into PPE — and it’s finding new success, especially among health care workers. 

When you roll up for a COVID-19 testing facility, don’t be alarmed if the nurse walks out in something resembling a plastic human tent. That’s just Under the Weather’s IntubationPod at work. 

And good news: If you’re finding individual pods to be too much, now you can buy a tent-like pod for the whole family.

This piece is part of a new series where we spotlight historical trends that feel relevant now. Send tips to [email protected]. 

It’s easy to feel like we’re living in an alternative-meat golden age. 

But rewind 110+ years, and you’ll find a similar trend: Back then, newspapers could not get enough of the explosion of “vegetable meat.” 

Nutty for Nuttose?

In 1896, nutritionist and cereal kingpin John Harvey Kellogg invented his first meat replacement — Nuttose.

It looked a bit like Nuteena, a canned meal made of peanut, soy, and corn that US stores sold until 2005. 

Nuttose was far from alone:

• In the early 1900s, a Chicago Tribune columnist named Jane Eddington served up recipes for sausages made from a smorgasbord of ingredients: lentils, breadcrumbs, hard-boiled eggs, eggplant, macaroni, and rice. 
• Then there was The Vegetarian Meat Company, a short-lived corporation that sold “peanut steaks, nut chops and other protein preparations.”
• Kellogg himself later came out with Nuttolene, a spread that had “the consistency of cream cheese, a meaty flavor and composition.”

Mmm… digestion! 

My favorite take on this all comes from the Evening Kansan-Republican, which in 1901 raved that “vegetable meat” is “almost indistinguishable from beef or mutton.” 

And not to worry — according to the newspaper, “one great advantage of the ‘vegetable meat’ is that it is ‘predigested’: it does away almost altogether with the necessity for the ordinary processes of assimilation.”

Here are a few other storylines we enjoyed yesterday: 

Is anyone ready for LinkedIn Stories? The feature — which LinkedIn announced a few weeks ago — is starting to roll out in some countries, and the reaction was well summarized by this tweet: “no.”

You can picture it already: People you met at that one conference 3 years ago reciting motivational quotes from their bedroom. Too many uploaded Slack screenshots. And as one user noted, we might be in for a deluge of recruiters posting “job of the day” video blurbs. 

The difference between a “job risk” and a “career risk” matters. For people nervous about abandoning their current job to work for a new startup, MasterClass CEO David Rogier has a few tips.

While joining a startup might involve job risk — in the sense that your job could disappear if the startup fails — it will rarely involve career risk, he says. 

Joining a startup means you get to dust off a fancy new job title, plus you’ll probably be handed a slew of new responsibilities. Strictly in terms of career, making the leap is probably smart. 

I really can’t imagine a notification worse than this. Venture capitalist Zak Kukoff logged into LinkedIn this week only to read these words: “Accountant at Internal Revenue Service viewed your profile.” The only thing more chilling? If “Accountant at IRS” started posting LinkedIn Stories.