Year after year, markets continue to expand and evolve making more room for brand-new, ground-breaking career paths to form. For any one of you out there who is hoping to bag a new job or change careers entirely, 2018 is set to be your lucky year. Today, we thought we’d take a look at some of the evolving and emerging markets that will the thriving during the next twelve months:

Online Gaming

As the world of gaming continues to thrive, one of the most promising frontiers of online gaming for 2018 is virtual reality (VR), which will open up dozens of career avenues for anyone who loves both technology and games. Though VR has only been available to consumers for a few years now, it has become increasingly popular with headsets appearing on the market at an astounding rate. This has led many tech pundits to suggest that VR and its sister tech-augmented reality (AR) could be worth $75 billion by 2021.

For now, the use of VR and AR in online gaming isn’t quite on par with console and PC gaming, but there is a huge potential there. One sector of the online gaming industry that has already started to adopt these new technologies is iGaming, as the sector is the perfect host for emerging genres like live dealer games. This genre has become particularly popular over the last year, as brands like 32Red have introduced live roulette, live blackjack, live poker, live baccarat, and even live Dream Catcher. These 32Red casino online live games and others like it stream live croupiers to desktops, smartphone, tablets and even VR headsets, creating an authentic, real-world casino experience for players. 32Red has even gone further by offering variants of each of its live games, including Immersive Roulette, Auto Roulette or Double Ball Roulette.

Another increasingly popular market the iGaming world has been quick to adopt is cryptocurrencies, which makes it a viable path for anyone specifically looking to work in digital currencies. Online casino operators such as Oshi Casino and Betcoin Casino have even gone as far as to deal solely in untraditional payment options including bitcoin and litecoin. Of course, other sectors of the online gaming world are attempting to do the same, but with big names like Steam dropping bitcoin payment, it seems iGaming may have to lead the charge.

Sustainable Tourism

While tourism used to be synonymous with luxury and/or an individual’s own chance for exploration, it seems that the industry is expecting far more selfless travellers throughout 2018. The sustainable tourism market, in which holidaymakers choose more responsible holidays, has been growing for many years now. This came as countries that receive large amounts of tourists experienced negative factors such as social dislocation, cultural heritage loss, economic dependence and ecological degradation. In response to this companies began offering nature-based holidays, ecotourism and many other friendlier alternatives to typical travel options.

In 2018, it seems that the tourism and travel industry will be pushing this agenda further. For example, one of the key tourism market trends we expect to see flourish over the next year is “voluntourism”, where jet-setters visit developing communities that need some help. Instead of offering beach holidays and getaways, companies like Discover Corps offer both individuals and families the chance to visit and help hard-up destinations for two-week vacations. Voluntourism is growing at an incredibly impressive rate, which means there are sure to be plenty of jobs for anyone who wishes to combine volunteering with the chance to work around the world in the tourism industry.

Biotechnology

Finally, we thought we’d include a sector for our more science-savvy readers. While there’s no denying that other science industries such as green energy, mobility technology and plenty of others are sure to prosper throughout 2018, it is arguably biotech that will make the most interesting leaps. This became increasingly clear after an article published by Forbes back in mid-January, within which they discuss four expert forecasts for the industry.

One particularly interesting prediction they proposed is that the industry will be looking for specialised skill sets, due to the fact biotech is developing so rapidly. They’re not entirely clear on which skills they mean in particular, but we imagine it’s a vast range, so anyone looking to enter the world of biotech has a good chance of getting in.

If you’re looking for a clue of which skills they may be looking for though, a developing technology that is thought to become a key player in 2018 is synthetic biology. That is the combination of engineering principles and the fundamental mechanisms of biology, or, basically, the design and construction of biological parts, systems, devices and medications from scratch. This sector of the biotech sphere is so popular at the moment that numerous well-known investors have thrown their proverbial hats into the ring, including Jerry Yang (Yahoo), Marc Andreessen (Netscape), Peter Thiel (PayPal) and Eric Schmidt (Google).

Do bear in mind that these are predictions, which are often known to change. That said, we’re quite confident in these evolving markets, as well as our insistence that anyone looking for a career keeps their eyes on these industries. If there are any others that you feel are worth sharing, please leave a comment below.