Introduction to the series

On 28 September 2026, the Private Academic High School PALO in Piaseczno, Poland, hosted “Jobs of the Future”, an event of the Erasmus+ project Young Smart Cities held during the European Sustainable Development Week. About 150 students and teachers from PALO and six local primary schools took part. After an expert panel with the Mayor of Piaseczno and a local business leader, students worked in groups and turned their ideas into posters.

Each group answered a common set of questions about work and education in a changing world. Can artificial intelligence help us choose a career? Should we follow money, our passions, or both? How do global events shape our choices? Which jobs are disappearing, and which old trades are coming back? Does school prepare us for what lies ahead, and which skills will matter most?

In this series we publish the ten posters one by one, with a short English summary of what the students wrote in Polish. Together they offer a snapshot of how teenagers aged 14–16 see their own future.

Poster 1 – Class 8D

Class 8D built a colourful mind map around the title “Jobs of the Future”. For them, AI is a useful tool for choosing a career, thanks to job-market analysis, but it is also the reason some professions are disappearing. They named architects in Poland and programmers in Europe as examples of jobs at risk.

When choosing a job, the class says, economics and personal interests both count. Wars, terrorism and market crashes can change both financial and life decisions. Returning jobs, in their view, are manual ones, such as the plumber. Their verdict on school is clear: the education system is not yet adapted to modern technology. The skills they consider most useful are cooperation, respect and openness to new technologies.