Jeremy see my Advice for Consultants page. I've always said the best way to get ahead is to hang out your shingle.

Also see Access Jobs.

Thank you Mr. Rost.

The most job security you could ever have with Access is getting hired into a position where you are the decision-maker on what tools to use, to keep, to dump, etc.  I was in such a position in my old job and I used Access for decades on the job, because I was the only one with the expertise (back then, the early 90s, few people used computers, let alone knew database).  I made all the decisions on what to use and what to keep, having tried many different database tools and finally settling on Access.  As long as the price was cheap (which MS Office was and is) and you could get the job done, the bosses generally wouldn't care what you use.  Nowadays, it's different.  The new generations of business owners are a lot more tech-savvy and may not need an in-house tech guy to decide on what tools to use.

Another way to get an Access job is work for a company that has a lot of legacy Access databases that they have maintain and/or migrate from.  Access was much more popular in the 90s and 2000s, so there may be companies today that still need Access expertise.

The advent of AI has created a lot of uncertainty not just for Access, but for all development work.  So you need to be able to adapt.  The time right now, when few people really know AI, is just like the early 90s when I started working and few people knew computers.  So your best bet is getting hired into a place where they HAVE to rely on your skills, just like my company that had to rely on me all those years ago.

In the early days of ChatGPT, when you asked about coding, the AI often gave you absolutely nonsensical answers.  In the last few years, AI has greatly improved, but sometimes it still gives answers that are, at best, close but no cigar.  The more obscure the topic, the more likely you'll get an erroneous answer.  If you ask AI about coding, you can't have any errors, since coding demands total accuracy.  Therefore, if you have the skills to catch these errors, you are suddenly more indispensable.  You not only can use AI to speed up coding, but you can also catch errors from AI to make you more efficient.  If I were hiring an Access person or any coder, I would definitely ask them how good they are in spotting BS from AI.

For example, I asked AI if the VBA command "Line Input" can read text in utf-8 encoding, and it gave me the answer pictured below.  It correctly answered that Line Input cannot handle utf-8 text, but when it offered a VBA solution, it made a slight error in the code: the line "line = .ReadLine" does not work because the ReadLine method does not exist.  The correct code to do the same thing is "line = . ReadText(adReadLine)".  If you have skills in doing this kind of thing, you make yourself more indispensible, because I consider this a valuable skill.

Thank you Kevin, what I understand is make sure the when you are inputting the code in, double check to ensure that the code is legitimate and like your example that have to catch mistakes per your example of the Line= command

AI has helped me get started and actually does help me learn because when I do catch the errors or fix the errors after more consultation, I learn the correct process. AI just helps me start, it is seldom the finished product.

Yeah, I have found when talking to AI for anything, whether it's coding related or any kind of instance where I need to have it give me an exact response, I treat it like a programming language. I'll give it instructions like this:

IF
   The customer is complaining
THEN
   1. apologize
   2. offer a refund

The clearer you make the instructions, the easier it is for the AI to follow.