3 Trends That Could Define Your Career in 2021

When you're making career plans for 2021, it's a smart idea to imagine where you think future economic growth will be, the industries that will still continue to suffer from the pandemic and whether this might be the right time to start your own business.

McKinsey recently published their list of 2021 trends based on their research, and here's some of the things you also might want to consider:

1. Consumer rebound. If you've been in an industry hard hit by the pandemic, things are expected to improve as the COVID-19 vaccine looses restrictions. It's predicted that "revenge shopping" will take place as consumers go crazy with shopping, eating in restaurants and going to concerts. How fast spending may recover depends on whether people in individual areas feel confident, so make sure you factor that into any future job decisions.

2. Business travel lags. While leisure travel will rebound, it's not going to be an immediate rebound for business trips. Business travel is expensive: in 2018, business-travel spending hit $1.4 trillion. But companies are expected -- after using Zoom and collaboration tools during the pandemic -- to reassess if travel is always necessary. Could your career plans be adversely affected if business travel drops off? Or, would you benefit if businesses continued to turn to technology to collaborate or meet? 

3. Entrepreneurs will blossom. From online medical appointments to shopping online for groceries, digital transformation has been sped up and now dominates the marketplace. It also opens the door to a flood of entrepreneurs who have seized on the pandemic disruption to market new ideas and start new businesses. Even McKinsey admits they didn't see this coming: More than 1.5 million new-business applications in the U.S., which is nearly double from the previous year. If you are afraid you can't go it alone, think again. Those new business applications show that people are figuring out ways to thrive with their own ideas and not be dependent on someone else.

While most of us could never have predicted what 2020 would become, monitoring market trends, reassessing our career paths and seizing on new opportunities may be the best way to weather whatever 2021 has up its sleeve.