12 jobs that did not exist 20 years ago

The first YouTube video went up in April 2005. In May 2007 YouTube started its partner program, which shared ad money with a small group of creators. Before that, nobody was paid for posting videos.

The typical channel still earns nothing. Long videos pay about $1 to $35 per 1,000 views in RPM (revenue per thousand views, what you keep after YouTube's cut), and Goldman Sachs estimates only about 4% of creators earn over $100,000 a year.

The channels that make it usually pick one topic, upload on a schedule for a year or more before any money arrives, and earn most of their income from sponsors rather than ads.

Facebook opened to anyone with an email address in September 2006, the same year Twitter launched. Companies soon needed someone to run their accounts, and a new job appeared.

This is a salaried job. The federal wage survey counts it inside market research analysts and marketing specialists, where the middle is about $78,760 a year. First jobs as a coordinator pay about $43,000 to $55,000, and the big pay step comes when you manage an advertising budget.

If you already run accounts that grew, that is real evidence. Employers hire on numbers you moved, not on how many posts you made.

AWS (Amazon Web Services) launched its online storage service in March 2006 and its rented servers in August 2006. Companies could stop buying their own machines, and someone had to build and run the rented ones.

There is no federal job code called cloud engineer, so the closest is computer network architects, with a median of $134,050 a year. Starting pay is about $70,000 to $95,000, and most people get there after a year or two on a help desk or in system administration.

The title data scientist was coined around 2008 by people building analytics teams at LinkedIn and Facebook. The federal government only gave it an occupation code of its own in 2018.

The median is $120,230 a year, and the bottom tenth start near $67,240. Very few people start with the title. The usual first job is data analyst, and most of the day goes on cleaning messy data, not building clever models.

The iPhone went on sale in 2007, but outside developers could not sell apps on it until Apple opened the App Store in July 2008. Google's Android store followed later that year.

Mobile developers are counted with all software developers, where the median is $135,980 a year and juniors start around $85,000 to $110,000. To publish your own app you pay Apple $99 a year or Google a one-time $25, so a student can ship a real app before applying anywhere.

Bloggers took free products before this, but Instagram launched in October 2010 and turned posting photos into something brands would pay for. TikTok merged with Musical.ly in 2018 and sped everything up.

Across 14,400 creators paid through CreatorIQ campaigns in 2025, the median was about $3,000 for the year, and the top 10% took 62% of the money. Small accounts often get paid in free products, which still count as taxable income.

The ones who last treat it as a small media business: a clear niche, a rate card, written contracts and a clear ad label on every paid post.

Twitch launched in June 2011 as a gaming spin-off of the live video site Justin.tv. Earning from subs, tips and ads on live video became a realistic goal from then on.

Most streams have almost no viewers. A channel with 5 to 20 viewers at a time often makes $0 to $200 a month, and you keep about $2.50 of a $4.99 sub on the standard split. The 2021 Twitch leak showed huge payouts at the very top and tiny ones below.

People played video games for prize money in the 1990s. What is new is a salary: Riot Games started its League of Legends Championship Series in 2013 with paid team rosters, and leagues with contracts followed.

Riot's minimum for players on partner teams in the Valorant Champions Tour Americas league is $50,000 a year, but that league has about 12 teams of 5 starters for two continents. The 100th highest-earning US player won $23,363 in prizes in 2025.

Research on StarCraft II players found reaction speed starts slowing around 24, so careers are short. Many players keep studying while they compete.

The idea is old: the first artificial neuron model was published in 1943. The job took off after 2012, when a neural network from the University of Toronto won a major image recognition contest by a wide margin and companies started hiring people to build systems like it.

There is no federal code for the title, so the closest figure is computer and information research scientists, with a median of $140,300 a year. New graduates at mid-sized and large companies often start at $95,000 to $140,000, usually with a computer science or math degree.

People flew drones for money before, but usually needed a special exemption. In August 2016 the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) brought in Part 107, a simple remote pilot certificate anyone 16 or older can earn with one written exam, no flight hours and no medical.

There is no separate national wage line for drone pilots, and full-time jobs that are only drone flying are still uncommon. The well-paid drone work belongs to surveyors, inspectors, filmmakers and engineers who added the certificate to another skill.

UGC (user-generated content) creators film casual, real-customer style videos that brands run as ads. It grew into its own freelance job in the early 2020s, once brands found TikTok-style clips often sold better than polished ads. On Collabstr's marketplace, 66% of creators offered it in 2025, up from 26% a year earlier.

You do not need followers, but it is freelance work. One video usually pays about $50 to $500, so a part-timer landing about 10 videos a year makes around $2,000. Charging extra when a brand runs your video as a paid ad is where the better money is.

ChatGPT launched on November 30, 2022. Within months, people were selling chatbots, voice receptionists and automated workflows to small businesses, and calling it an AI automation agency.

No survey tracks it, so the typical figure of about $3,000 a year is an estimate. First projects often go for $500 to $3,000, and the real business is a monthly fee of $200 to $2,000 per client to keep things running. The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has already acted against schemes selling AI income dreams, so be wary of courses that promise easy clients.