One of the very few silver linings emerging from the coronavirus pandemic affected the job market is, several new job opportunities becoming available to people that are bringing unique qualifications to the market. The expert data analysts working at LinkedIn explored numerous job listings to find out that there is an increased demand for qualified specialists in diverse fields. They saw the exponential growth potential for these industries.

1. Personal protective equipment (PPE)

PPE or personal protective equipment is one of the more talked about industries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Demand for PPE has been off the charts and several countries relied on the import of the equipment from other nations such as China. These countries are facing an acute shortage of this critical equipment. In the wake of the devastating damage as a result of COVID-19, there is a sharp call for different hospitals to maintain stockpiles of the PPE in case there is another break out of the crisis in the future. Almost all PPE has an expiry date and therefore a constant supply of this equipment is needed to maintain reserves. This also means that manufacturers are going to be working on the demand continuously. There will be a demand for conventional masks as well as high-tech equipment and as a result, this industry is set to boom in the upcoming years.

2. Virtual meeting platforms

Virtual meetings have been successful in bringing a sense of normalcy to work from home lives. One company is at the forefront of this sector and that is Zoom. Zoom boomed at the time of this crisis and its stock prices surged by more than 100% within a couple of months. Google decided to make the premium features of Google Hangouts free till September. Microsoft found out that the number of daily users of its software Teams jumped by more than 30% in March alone. As many organizations are forced to adapt to work from home scenarios there are greater chances of more remote work in the future. It is expected that a quarter of the US workforce will be working from home by the end of 2021.

3. Cannabis

The cannabis industry is all set to expand onto many newer markets in 2021. This might be the right opportunity to start a new business in this space. It is easy to envisage the cannabis industry as something that requires growing the plant, refining the products, and dispensaries that sell these products. Although these elements are at the base of a huge cannabis supply chain, keep in mind that the cannabis industry is far more complex and there are many other areas involved in the business. Two broad categories classify the industry plant-touching businesses and ancillary businesses. However, there are several challenges involved in cannabis real estate development such as:

-Development of proper partnerships.

-Constantly changing rules and regulations.

-Banking, finance, and insurance challenges.

-Marketing and advertising regulations.

-Stigma

4. Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity was always a big business, however; a rising dependency on various digital assets such as virtual meeting platforms has meant that the company data is more susceptible than ever to hacking. The advent of COVID-19 has proved to be one of the major threats to cybersecurity as scammers around the world are taking advantage of all the uncertainty surrounding the disease. Spam email campaigns have become commonplace. For many companies, this transition of moving their services online was rushed and as a result, all the necessary steps regarding customer security are not getting followed. But there is an increasing trend to spend more on the requisite online security measures.

Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic saw the whole wide world come to a standstill. As a result of this situation, several businesses are struggling quite a bit to stay alive as the crisis rolls over. But despite this onslaught from the pandemic several industries saw their profits grow and this trend is likely to continue even post-pandemic. Other struggling industries will also begin to flourish now as the pandemic crisis comes to a close. The industries mentioned above are only some of the sectors that will grow exponentially after the pandemic. Many other sectors will thrive in the aftermath of the pandemic.