richard scarry book jobs

This is what your job looks like in a Richard Scarry book

When I was a kid, I loved Richard Scarry’s books. The cute little personified animals depicting townspeople going about their day helps to teach children many different words – types of buildings and other structures in a town as well as different people and their jobs. Let’s take a quick flashback to sometime in my childhood (ish) to see what kids were looking at back then:

Before (The Original Richard Scarry Book Illustration)

Letter carriers. Fire fighters. Police officers. Farmers. While these things still exist (at least for now – I personally don’t have high hopes for the long term sustainability of the postal service), things have certainly changed over the years. STEM jobs are expected to grow at a rate exponentially greater than non-STEM jobs, and make up a large percentage of jobs on the whole. So if letter carriers and farmers are out, what’s in?

This is what your job looks like in a Richard Scarry book

The adorable yet totally snarky yet pretty true graphic below explores some of the 21st century jobs that we probably wouldn’t have anticipated back in the early days of Richard Scarry. What else would you add to the list below?

  • Helicopter parent
  • Brick and mortar dismantler
  • One-percenter
  • One-percenter service provider
  • Non-lending officer
  • Climate change denier
  • SuperPAC money launderer
  • Content creator
  • Content aggregator
  • PED doctor
  • Tech start0up PR disaster recovery specialist
  • NSA information gatherers
  • Web design complicator so that users will actually click on ads
  • Fart sound app-maker
  • Professional celebrity
  • Tech start up executive
  • Reality show camera man
  • Rage pundit
  • Lowly immigrant
  • Paparazzo

After (The 21st Century Busy Town Jobs Illustration)

Written by Katie Dunn



Explorer, eternal learner, animal lover. Perpetually drawn to the ocean. Adventure ready. Suffers from wanderlust. Likes chasing things down the sink with the little sprayer thingy.

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