In 2007, a professor at Stanford University gave his students one assignment: Devise an app. Get people to use it. Repeat. No one expected that by the end of the class, the students would generate millions of users for the free apps they created to run on Facebook.  One teams’s app was designed to allow Facebook users to send “hotness points” to one another. By the end of the class the team had net $3,000 a day–morphing into a company that later sold for a six-figure sum. Nearly all of the students in what is now dubbed “The Facebook Class” wound up making far more money than their professors by the end of the semester.

Stanford’s Facebook Class is evidence that despite America’s sky-high unemployment rate, new jobs and new industries sprout with each year. Consider this excerpt from a recent Time Magazine article:

Ten years ago, Facebook didn’t exist. Ten years before that, we didn’t have the web. So who knows what jobs will be born a decade from now? Though unemployment is at a 25-year high, work will eventually return. But it won’t look the same. No one is going to pay you just to show up. We will see a more flexible, more freelance, more collaborative, and far less secure work world.

It takes some guts–and some imagination–to spot trends and leverage them to your advantage, but smart workers always keep one eye on the future. No one wants to be the guy building a buggy next to the Ford plant.

Brilliant ideas almost always seem stupid at first. The first automobiles were clunky and unreliable in 1914…but in short order, Henry Ford's Model T would replace the horse and buggy as America's mode of transportation.

So what will the next ten years hold for the job market? What new jobs will emerge, and what fringe occupations will become mainstream?

Five Hot Jobs (That Don’t Exist Yet)

1. Lawyers specializing in virtual property issues

Every once in a while, a dead person pops up in the “People You May Know” area of my Facebook account. It’s totally unsettling, but not unexpected when you consider how many people  don’t discuss treatment of their social media properties in their last will and testament. And what about ardent devotees of multiplayer role-playing games? Regular players of World of Warcraft, Second Life and Eve online accumulate virtual property and characters worth real money in the outside world. Theft, hacking, fraud and other forms of virtual foul play have already started to trickle into small claims courts–how long until these suits become mainstream, and specialty lawyers are in demand? My guess is: less than five years.

Could adultery (or polygamy) in Second Life be cause for fault in a real-life divorce proceeding?

2. Freelance Education Coordinator

CNN recently announced that the cost of raising a child is up 40% since 2000. In the same week, the Economist reported that childcare is consuming 68% or more of a second parent’s income. The quality of US public schools is declining, but private schools are increasingly expensive–and the “spiritual not religious” generation will likely bristle at the thought of sending their kids to a religious institution. That leaves homeschooling, which many futurists predict will become more mainstream over the next decade. But how will this jive with the “two-income parents” phenomenon? I predict the rise of the Freelance Homeschooling Coordinator. This individual may work individually with one student, or with a host of clients across a geographical area. They may be a freelance educator, or they may be a coordinator of co-ops, curriculum, and resources. Either way, we’ll see a new K-12 model emerge that connects parents, teachers, and resources without the bureaucracy or costs associated with traditional schools.

3. Professional Companion

In the 19th century, upper-class women often hired a “lady’s companion” to provide intellectual and social stimulation. The companion’s role was to spend time with her employer, providing company and conversation, to help her entertain guests, and often to accompany her to social events. In return, the companion received board and lodging and an allowance. Fast forward a couple hundred years to today: due to the exorbitant costs of child-rearing (see above), couples are opting out of raising children. As these couples age, the need for elderly companionship will rise–and we may be surprised to see a return of paid friendships.

4. Cataclysm Consultant

Science has revealed that Earth has had far too many close calls for comfort. Super volcanoes, asteroids, and major fault lines are the makings of a great action movie–but they may not be far off from reality. Thanks to our handy-dandy telescopes, we now know that asteroids zip within 79,000 kilometers of Earth several times a week, and astronomers are now admitting that there is a small but real possibility that an asteroid could hit earth in less than 50 years. Forget space tourism…it’s likely that the government’s space exploration budget will divert to disaster prevention within a decade or two.

Could Deep Impact become a reality?

5. Death Coach

While we’re already on a gloomy topic, let’s talk about the fact that in less than a decade, genetic education will be a part of our annual medical check-up. In the future, genetic screeners (another job that hasn’t been invented yet) will likely be able to predict our approximate time of death based on our genes. We all know we’re going to die sometime, but imagine that at 45 you learned that you were most likely to die between ages 55 and 60. That requires a whole new level of mental therapy–literally. Enter the death and dying coach, a trained professional who will help you come to grips with your mortality years before a terminal diagnosis.