What the world wants to do for a living: Fascinating maps show how being a pilot will be the world’s No. 1 dream job by 2024, from Britain to New Zealand, as Americans want to be a flight attendant
A series of fascinating, reworked maps have revealed the most popular jobs around the world – and being a pilot tops the list as the world’s number one dream job in 2024.
On the main map – generated using the search analytics tool Ahrefs – countries are colour-coded to indicate the jobs their residents are most interested in learning about for a career change.
The sentence ‘how to become a pilot‘ was keyed 50,000 times on the internet in January 2024, with the search tops in 55 countries around the world, including Britain, Spain, Ireland, New Zealand, Kenya, Somalia, India, Saudi Arabia and Japan.
According to research by career site Jobseeker, this is the second most popular job in the world flight attendantwhich generated 29,000 searches and is at the top in America, Canada, Mexico and Brazil.
Be one fashion model ranks third (25,000 searches) worldwide and is the number 1 career choice in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Egypt, Algeria, Iraq and Morocco.
The map above shows countries color-coded to indicate the most searched for job titles by their residents, with the key identifying the 35 ‘dream jobs’ used to collect the data. The information was collected by career site Jobseeker, using the search tool Ahrens. Pilot is the number one choice in 55 countries on all six inhabited continents
Pilot is number one in Britain, as well as in six other European countries. In Central Europe, the idea of being a model dominates – it tops the list in 25 European countries, including France, Italy, Sweden and Germany – and in 45 countries worldwide
Jobseeker said: ‘Europe was a key driver of this trend, along with that of the continent [prominence] as a fashion powerhouse likely to influence locals.”
The rest of the top five consists of psychologist (fourth, 17,000) – top in Australia and Bolivia – and ‘influencer‘ (fifth, 17,000), top in Colombia, Venezuela and South Africa.
Doctor is sixth in the rankings (15,000) – top in Uganda and DR Congo – lecturer comes seventh (14,000, seventh) and is top in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia; while you have a lawyer comes in eighth place (14,000). A legal career is the first choice in Haiti and Liberia.
The rest of the top 10 consists of fireman (ninth, 14,000 and top in Chile) and ‘entrepreneur‘ (13,000 and top in Guinea).
North America is clearly enamored with a life of travel, as the dream job for residents of the US, Mexico and Canada is flight attendant. The results are varied across South America, with no overwhelming favorites. Influencer, teacher and even football coach are all discussed
In Oceania’s largest country, Australia, psychologist is the most popular career choice. Neighboring New Zealand’s dream job is pilot, while flight attendant ranks first in four countries
Outside the top 10 list, the maps show Montenegro breaking European trends, with people daydreaming about life as musicians.
While Australians are curious about psychology, there are numerous jobs piqued interest across the islands of Oceania, from photographer in Samoa and the Cook Islands to singer in New Caledonia and YouTuber in Fiji.
In South America, Argentinians are looking for details on how to become a chef, while Bolivians’ dream job is a photographer.
The survey shows that Peruvians want to become teachers, citizens of football coaches in Paraguay and Uruguayans want to become YouTubers.
In Asia, becoming a pilot or a model is the best choice, but not in China, where journalism is the first career choice, while becoming a teacher is the dream role in Taiwan.
Afghanistan and Yemen are also bucking the trend in Asia: their citizens would prefer to be writers.
The pilot dominates in Africa, but there is also great interest in modern activities such as blogger and influencer
Generally, Asians want to become pilots, but models, lawyers and writers are also popular choices. In China the dream job is journalist
A Jobseeker spokesperson said: ‘Our Dream Jobs campaign was incredibly exciting to develop, revealing key patterns and differences between what we see as a dream job.
‘While the prospect of becoming a pilot is a strong theme in the research, the sheer variety of career paths indicates that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to career satisfaction and fulfillment. We’re happy to see more modern avenues, like influencers and YouTubers, making the list. Who knows what people’s dream jobs will be as professions evolve over the next 10, 20 and 50 years?
‘Every country in the world has a unique view of what a dream career means.’
To gather the data, Jobseeker has compiled a ‘seed list’ of 35 jobs commonly defined as dream careers. This list was then uploaded to Ahrefs and ranked based on total global search volume.
Countries across the six populated continents were rated against the 35 dream jobs using the search template ‘how to become one.’ [JOB TITLE]’, with the end result being the most sought-after dream job per country.
Data was collected through internet searches for January 2024.
For more information visit www.jobseeker.com/en/resume/articles/dream-jobs-around-the-world.