Carpenters have been with us ever since Noah took some sound advice and built himself an ark. They'll be with us twenty years from now, too, although the work they do may be a bit limited.

See, once upon a time, if you saw something made of wood, you could bet a carpenter had crafted it. Today, however, thanks to prefabrication, any untalented hack can put a cabinet together. All you have to do is go to IKEA—the Disney World of furniture—and pick up a buffet-in-a-box that you can erect at home at your own leisure. IKEA's model has made it the largest furniture store in the world; in 2013, it sold $37 billion worth of Sensuells and Pysslingars.

However, just because any Stanford graduate can build his or her own TV stand doesn't mean carpenters are going to disappear from the face of the planet (unlike all the unicorns that died in the Flood). We'll need carpenters to build homes, workplaces, and hobby shops for the nine billion people who'll be on planet Earth come 2050.

So, woodworkers of the world, rejoice Your talents will be needed in the years to come...unless, of course, the zombie apocalypse we've all been predicting for so long comes early.

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