World Economic Forum: Future of Jobs Report 2025
Key takeaways
AI and information processing is the technology employers expect to have the greatest impact on business by 2030. 86% expect it to transform their business, ahead of robotics and autonomous systems at 58%.
The labour market is expected to experience substantial redistribution rather than simple contraction. Employers project 170 million jobs created and 92 million displaced by 2030, resulting in net growth of 78 million jobs.
Skills are changing almost as quickly as jobs. Employers expect 39% of workers’ existing skill sets to be transformed or become outdated by 2030.
Workforce transition is becoming a core operating requirement. Of every 100 workers, employers expect 29 to require upskilling in their current role, 19 to require reskilling and internal redeployment and 11 to require training they may not receive.
Skills gaps are already the biggest barrier to transformation. 63% of employers identify skills gaps as a major barrier, while 85% plan to prioritise workforce upskilling.
Employers are preparing for automation and internal transition at the same time. 70% expect to hire people with emerging skills, around half expect to transition employees from declining to growing roles and around 40% expect workforce reductions where skills become less relevant.
AI does not remove the need for human capabilities. AI and big data, cybersecurity and technological literacy are among the fastest growing technical skills, while analytical thinking, resilience, creativity, leadership and lifelong learning remain central to the future workforce.
The future of work is a question of automation and augmentation together. Employers expect work performed mainly by people, mainly by technology and through human technology collaboration to move towards a roughly even split by 2030.
Executive summary
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 examines how technological change, geoeconomic fragmentation, economic uncertainty, demographic shifts and the green transition will reshape labour markets through 2030. The research brings together the perspectives of more than 1,000 employers representing more than 14 million workers across 22 industry clusters and 55 economies.
The report does not describe a future in which technology simply removes jobs. It describes a much larger redistribution of work. Employers expect structural labour market transformation to affect 22% of today’s jobs by 2030. Around 170 million jobs are expected to be created while 92 million are displaced, leaving net employment growth of 78 million jobs.
The more immediate enterprise challenge is skills. Employers expect 39% of workers’ existing skill sets to change or become outdated by 2030. AI and big data, cybersecurity and technological literacy are rising quickly, but so are human capabilities including creative thinking, resilience, leadership, curiosity and analytical thinking. The future workforce therefore needs both technological capability and the human skills required to operate effectively alongside increasingly capable systems.
The scale of the workforce transition is significant. If the global workforce were represented by 100 people, 59 would need training by 2030. Employers expect 29 to be upskilled within their existing role, 19 to be reskilled and moved into another role inside the organisation and 11 to need training they may not receive.
The report therefore moves the workforce discussion beyond generic reskilling. Organisations need to understand which work is changing, which roles are declining, which roles are growing, what skills those future roles require and which employees can realistically transition into them.
For enterprises adopting AI, the sequencing becomes important. The future division of work between people and technology has to be understood before leaders can know what roles to redesign, which skills to develop, where internal mobility is possible and where external hiring is genuinely required.
Key stats and quotable claims
86% of employers expect AI and information processing technologies to transform their business by 2030.
58% expect robots and autonomous systems to transform their business.
170 million jobs are projected to be created by 2030.
92 million existing jobs are projected to be displaced.
78 million net new jobs are projected overall.
22% of today’s jobs are expected to be affected by structural labour market transformation.
39% of workers’ existing skill sets are expected to change or become outdated by 2030.
50% of workers have already completed training, reskilling or upskilling measures, up from 41% in the previous edition.
59 in every 100 workers are expected to require training by 2030.
29 in every 100 are expected to be upskilled in their current role.
19 in every 100 are expected to be reskilled and redeployed internally.
11 in every 100 are expected to require training they may not receive.
63% of employers identify skills gaps as a major barrier to business transformation.
85% plan to prioritise upskilling their workforce.
70% expect to hire employees with new skills.
50% expect to transition staff from declining into growing roles.
Around 40% expect to reduce workforce where skills become less relevant.
69% of employers identify analytical thinking as a core skill today.
67% identify resilience, flexibility and agility.
61% identify leadership and social influence.
57% identify creative thinking.
AI and big data is the fastest growing skill category through 2030.
Around half of employers plan to reorient their businesses in response to AI, around two thirds plan to recruit talent with specific AI skills and around 40% anticipate workforce reductions where AI can automate tasks.
Overall summary
The report describes a global workforce entering a period of substantial reallocation. Technology is one of the largest drivers, but it is operating alongside economic uncertainty, demographic change, climate transition and geoeconomic fragmentation. The future of jobs therefore cannot be reduced to a single question about whether AI creates or removes employment.
The more useful unit of analysis is the work itself.
Employers estimate that 47% of tasks are currently performed mainly by people, 22% mainly by technology and 30% through a combination of people and technology. By 2030, they expect those proportions to move towards a roughly even three way split.
The distinction between automation and augmentation is important. Some activities will move almost entirely to technology. Others will increasingly combine people and machines. The report explicitly argues that technology can be designed to complement and enhance human work rather than simply displace it, and that reskilling and workforce development can help determine which direction organisations take.
Skills then become the bridge between the current organisation and the future one.
Employers expect 39% of core skills to change by 2030. AI and big data, networks and cybersecurity and technological literacy rise fastest, but creative thinking, resilience, curiosity, leadership, talent management and analytical thinking also become more important. The report therefore does not support a simple technology skills versus human skills distinction. Future roles increasingly combine both.
The workforce implications are substantial. Employers expect upskilling to be their most common workforce response, followed by automation, external hiring and workforce augmentation. Internal transition also becomes important as organisations attempt to move people from declining roles into areas where demand is growing.
For WORK SELF, the most important insight is the sequencing.
An organisation cannot determine the right reskilling programme without first understanding how work will change. It cannot know whether someone should be redeployed without understanding the destination role and its required skills. And it cannot know how much external recruitment is necessary until it understands the transition potential already inside the workforce.
The report therefore points towards workforce transition becoming a continuous operating capability rather than a one time change programme.
Deep dive
Key findings
Technological change, geoeconomic fragmentation, economic uncertainty, demographic shifts and the green transition – individually and in combination – are among the major drivers expected to shape and transform the global labour market by 2030.
The Future of Jobs Report 2025 brings together the perspective of over 1,000 leading global employers—collectively representing more than 14 million workers across 22 industry clusters and 55 economies from around the world—to examine how these macrotrends impact jobs and skills, and the workforce transformation strategies employers plan to embark on in response, across the 2025 to 2030 timeframe.
Broadening digital access is expected to be the most transformative trend – both across technology related trends and overall – with 60% of employers expecting it to transform their business by 2030. Advancements in technologies, particularly AI and information processing (86%); robotics and automation (58%); and energy generation, storage and distribution (41%), are also expected to be transformative.
These trends are expected to have a divergent effect on jobs, driving both the fastest growing and fastest declining roles, and fueling demand for technology related skills, including AI and big data, networks and cybersecurity and technological literacy, which are anticipated to be the top three fastest growing skills.
Increasing cost of living ranks as the second most transformative trend overall – and the top trend related to economic conditions – with half of employers expecting it to transform their business by 2030, despite an anticipated reduction in global inflation.
General economic slowdown, to a lesser extent, also remains top of mind and is expected to transform 42% of businesses. Inflation is predicted to have a mixed outlook for net job creation to 2030, while slower growth is expected to displace 1.6 million jobs globally.
These two impacts on job creation are expected to increase the demand for creative thinking and resilience, flexibility, and agility skills.
Climate change mitigation is the third most transformative trend overall – and the top trend related to the green transition – while climate change adaptation ranks sixth with 47% and 41% of employers, respectively, expecting these trends to transform their business in the next five years.
This is driving demand for roles such as renewable energy engineers, environmental engineers and electric and autonomous vehicle specialists, all among the 15 fastest growing jobs.
Climate trends are also expected to drive an increased focus on environmental stewardship, which has entered the Future of Jobs Report’s list of top 10 fastest growing skills for the first time.
Two demographic shifts are increasingly seen to be transforming global economies and labour markets: aging and declining working age populations, predominantly in higher income economies, and expanding working age populations, predominantly in lower income economies.
These trends drive an increase in demand for skills in talent management, teaching and mentoring, and motivation and self awareness.
Aging populations drive growth in healthcare jobs such as nursing professionals, while growing working age populations fuel growth in education related professions, such as higher education teachers.
Geoeconomic fragmentation and geopolitical tensions are expected to drive business model transformation in one third (34%) of surveyed organizations in the next five years.
Over one fifth (23%) of global employers identify increased restrictions on trade and investment, as well as subsidies and industrial policies (21%), as factors shaping their operations.
Employers who expect geoeconomic trends to transform their business are also more likely to offshore – and even more likely to re shore – operations.
These trends are driving demand for security related job roles and increasing demand for network and cybersecurity skills. They are also increasing demand for other human centred skills such as resilience, flexibility and agility skills, and leadership and social influence.
Extrapolating from the predictions shared by Future of Jobs Survey respondents, on current trends over the 2025 to 2030 period job creation and destruction due to structural labour market transformation will amount to 22% of today’s total jobs.
This is expected to entail the creation of new jobs equivalent to 14% of today’s total employment, amounting to 170 million jobs.
However, this growth is expected to be offset by the displacement of the equivalent of 8% (or 92 million) of current jobs, resulting in net growth of 7% of total employment, or 78 million jobs.
Frontline job roles are predicted to see the largest growth in absolute terms of volume and include Farmworkers, Delivery Drivers, Construction Workers, Salespersons, and Food Processing Workers.
Care economy jobs, such as Nursing Professionals, Social Work and Counselling Professionals and Personal Care Aides are also expected to grow significantly over the next five years, alongside Education roles such as Tertiary and Secondary Education Teachers.
Technology related roles are the fastest growing jobs in percentage terms, including Big Data Specialists, Fintech Engineers, AI and Machine Learning Specialists and Software and Application Developers.
Green and energy transition roles, including Autonomous and Electric Vehicle Specialists, Environmental Engineers, and Renewable Energy Engineers, also feature within the top fastest growing roles.
Clerical and Secretarial Workers – including Cashiers and Ticket Clerks, and Administrative Assistants and Executive Secretaries – are expected to see the largest decline in absolute numbers.
Similarly, businesses expect the fastest declining roles to include Postal Service Clerks, Bank Tellers and Data Entry Clerks.
On average, workers can expect that two fifths (39%) of their existing skill sets will be transformed or become outdated over the 2025 to 2030 period.
However, this measure of “skill instability” has slowed compared to previous editions of the report, from 44% in 2023 and a high point of 57% in 2020 in the wake of the pandemic.
This finding could potentially be due to an increasing share of workers (50%) having completed training, reskilling or upskilling measures, compared to 41% in the report’s 2023 edition.
Analytical thinking remains the most sought after core skill among employers, with seven out of 10 companies considering it as essential in 2025.
This is followed by resilience, flexibility and agility, along with leadership and social influence.
AI and big data top the list of fastest growing skills, followed closely by networks and cybersecurity as well as technology literacy.
Complementing these technology related skills, creative thinking, resilience, flexibility and agility, along with curiosity and lifelong learning, are also expected to continue to rise in importance over the 2025 to 2030 period.
Conversely, manual dexterity, endurance and precision stand out with notable net declines in skills demand, with 24% of respondents foreseeing a decrease in their importance.
While global job numbers are projected to grow by 2030, existing and emerging skills differences between growing and declining roles could exacerbate existing skills gaps.
The most prominent skills differentiating growing from declining jobs are anticipated to comprise resilience, flexibility and agility; resource management and operations; quality control; programming and technological literacy.
Given these evolving skill demands, the scale of workforce upskilling and reskilling expected to be needed remains significant: if the world’s workforce was made up of 100 people, 59 would need training by 2030.
Of these, employers foresee that 29 could be upskilled in their current roles and 19 could be upskilled and redeployed elsewhere within their organization.
However, 11 would be unlikely to receive the reskilling or upskilling needed, leaving their employment prospects increasingly at risk.
Skill gaps are categorically considered the biggest barrier to business transformation by Future of Jobs Survey respondents, with 63% of employers identifying them as a major barrier over the 2025 to 2030 period.
Accordingly, 85% of employers surveyed plan to prioritize upskilling their workforce, with 70% of employers expecting to hire staff with new skills, 40% planning to reduce staff as their skills become less relevant, and 50% planning to transition staff from declining to growing roles.
Supporting employee health and well being is expected to be a top focus for talent attraction, with 64% of employers surveyed identifying it as a key strategy to increase talent availability.
Effective reskilling and upskilling initiatives, along with improving talent progression and promotion, are also seen as holding high potential for talent attraction.
Funding for – and provision of – reskilling and upskilling are seen as the two most welcomed public policies to boost talent availability.
By 2030, just over half of employers anticipate allocating a greater share of their revenue to wages.
Wage strategies are driven primarily by goals of aligning wages with workers’ productivity and performance and competing for retaining talent and skills.
Finally, half of employers plan to re orient their business in response to AI, two thirds plan to hire talent with specific AI skills, while 40% anticipate reducing their workforce where AI can automate tasks.
Introduction: the global labour market landscape in 2025
The year 2025 unfolds amid ongoing transformations in global labour markets.
Since the COVID 19 pandemic, rising cost of living, geopolitical conflicts, the climate emergency and economic downturns have added further turbulence to technology driven global employment changes.
While the global economic outlook appears to be stabilizing, it does so amid weaker global growth projections of 3.2% for 2025.
Global inflation appears to have eased and is now projected to reach 3.5% by the end of 2025 – below the average global rate of the first two decades of the 21st century. However, living costs remain elevated around the world.
Aided by a stabilizing economic outlook and easing inflation, the global unemployment rate, at 4.9%, stands at the lowest level since 1991.
However, this headline figure hides a range of disparities.
While middle income countries are experiencing reductions in unemployment, low income countries have seen an increase, from 5.1% in 2022 to 5.3% by 2024.
Reductions in unemployment have also lagged for women.
Since 2020, when the global unemployment rate peaked for both sexes at 6.6%, the rate for men has declined to 4.8%, while the rate for women remains elevated at 5.2%.
Youth unemployment rates tell another story of labour market health.
While the global youth unemployment rate has tracked the total global unemployment rate, it remains elevated at 13%.
Assessing rates of youth not in employment education or training highlights disparities between economies at different national income levels.
While the global rate remains flat at 21.7%, it stands at just 10.1% for high income economies, rising to 17.3% for upper middle income ones. The rate then jumps to 25.9% for lower middle income economies and 27.6% for low income ones.
Against the backdrop of this current labour market landscape, the Future of Jobs Report 2025 analyses how organizations expect the labour market to evolve over the next five years until 2030.
Like previous editions of the report, this analysis is based on the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Survey, conducted in late 2024, which brings together the perspectives of more than 1,000 global employers, collectively employing more than 14.1 million workers across 22 industry clusters and 55 economies.
The survey highlights how macrotrends and technology will influence industry transformation and employment, the jobs and skills outlook over the next five years and the corresponding workforce transformation strategies companies plan to use to address these issues.
The report begins by outlining five macrotrends impacting the labour market – technological change, the green transition, geoeconomic fragmentation, economic uncertainty and demographic shifts.
Chapter 2 discusses how organizations expect jobs to evolve, including which jobs are predicted to grow and decline fastest, and the trends driving these changes.
Chapter 3 looks at projected changes to the skills needed in the labour market, before Chapter 4 analyses the workforce practices that employers plan to adopt in their organizations.
Finally, Chapter 5 provides insights for the nine regions, 55 economies and 22 industry clusters that meet the report’s statistical thresholds for standalone analysis.
Chapter 1: Drivers of labour market transformation
Technological developments, the green transition, macroeconomic and geoeconomic shifts, and demographic changes are driving transformation in the global labour market, reshaping both jobs and required skills.
This chapter provides a picture of how companies expect these macrotrends to drive industry transformation by 2030.
Technological change
More employers – 60% – expect broadening digital access to transform their business than any other trend, with similar proportions of employers across all regions selecting this trend.
This growing digital access is a critical enabler for new technologies to transform labour markets.
Of the nine technologies, three stand out as being expected to have the greatest impact.
Robots and autonomous systems are expected to transform 58% of employers’ businesses, while energy generation and storage technologies are expected to transform 41%.
But it is artificial intelligence and information processing technologies that are expected to have the biggest impact – with 86% of respondents expecting these technologies to transform their business by 2030.
Generative AI, in particular, has witnessed a rapid surge in both investment and adoption across various sectors.
Since the release of Chat GPT in November 2022, investment flows into AI have increased nearly eightfold.
This influx of capital has been accompanied by investment in the physical infrastructure needed to support these emerging technologies, including servers and energy generation plants.
By leveraging natural language processing technology, GenAI enables users to interact with it as though they were conversing with a human, considerably reducing barriers to usage and the need for specialized technical knowledge.
Accordingly, the demand for GenAI skills by both businesses and individuals has also grown significantly.
Although more generalized adoption of AI applications remains comparatively low, with only a small fraction of firms using it in 2023, adoption is growing rapidly, albeit unevenly across sectors.
The information technology sector is leading the way in AI adoption, while industries such as construction are lagging behind.
While the full extent of long term productivity gains from the technology remains uncertain, workplace studies have identified various initial ways for generative AI to enhance human skills and performance.
Some of these studies have highlighted ways for generative AI to enhance human core skills, or to substitute for tacit knowledge among newer or average performing workers.
Other studies have shown generative AI can enhance knowledge work if applied appropriately within its capability, but risks producing adverse outcomes where users unknowingly stretch it beyond its capability.
Looking further ahead, some observers argue generative AI could empower less specialized employees to perform a greater range of “expert” tasks – expanding the possible functions of roles such as Accounting Clerks, Nurses, and Teaching Assistants.
Similarly, the technology could equip skilled professionals such as Electricians, Doctors or Engineers with the world’s forefront knowledge – enabling them to solve complex problems more efficiently.
Outcomes such as these – which create genuine shifts in the quantity or quality of output – are more likely to come about if technology development is focused on enhancing rather than substituting for human capabilities.
Demand for generative AI skills
Coursera data generated for the Future of Jobs Report 2025 reveals significant growth in demand for Generative AI training among both individual learners and enterprises.
Demand for AI skills has accelerated globally, with India and the United States leading in enrolment numbers.
However, the drivers of demand differ.
In the United States demand is primarily driven by individual users, whereas in India, corporate sponsorship plays a significant role in boosting GenAI training uptake.
Globally, individual learners on Coursera have focused on foundational GenAI skills and conceptual topics, such as prompt engineering, trustworthy AI practices, and strategic decision making around AI.
Institution sponsored learners, on the other hand, emphasize practical applications within the workplace, including leveraging AI tools to enhance efficiency in Excel or leveraging the technology to develop applications.
These trends reflect a tailored approach to GenAI learning, where individuals focus on foundational knowledge building while organizations prioritize training that delivers immediate workplace productivity gains.
Economic uncertainty
As of early 2025, the global economic outlook appears to be shaped by a combination of cautious optimism and persistent uncertainties.
While there are signs of improving global conditions, vulnerabilities persist.
Despite this comparatively steady outlook, price pressures persist in many economies.
Against this backdrop, companies expect economic pressures to be among the most transformative drivers.
Rising cost of living remains a top concern, with half of all surveyed employers expecting it to drive transformation, making it the second most influential trend.
Slower economic growth is also a major concern, with 42% of respondents expecting it to impact their operations.
Geoeconomic fragmentation
Intensifying geoeconomic tensions threaten trade and supply chains, with lower income economies particularly vulnerable, given that essential goods like food and energy comprise a larger share of household expenditures in these countries.
Globally, governments are responding to geoeconomic challenges by imposing trade and investment restrictions, increasing subsidies, and adjusting industrial policies.
Around one third of surveyed employers see heightened geopolitical tensions and conflicts as a key driver of organizational transformation.
Meanwhile just over one fifth of surveyed organizations identify increased restrictions on trade and investment, as well as subsidies and industrial policies, as factors reshaping their operations.
The broader implications of geoeconomic fragmentation extend beyond individual business strategies to long term economic stability and growth, and limit multilateral cooperation on critical issues such as climate change and pandemic preparedness.
Green transition
Despite an increasingly complex outlook for global climate negotiations, the green transition remains a priority for many organizations globally.
Nearly half of surveyed employers anticipate the ramping up of efforts and investments to reduce carbon emissions as a key driver for organizational transformation.
Similarly, 41% expect that increased efforts and investments to adapt to climate change will drive significant organizational changes.
These two trends rank 3rd and 6th, respectively, among the drivers of business transformation identified by the Future of Jobs Survey.
These priorities have enabled green jobs to demonstrate resilience in recent years, with hiring rates in green sectors remaining relatively stable even throughout the pandemic related disruptions of 2020.
As countries seek to meet climate goals, questions arise regarding whether their workforces are equipped with the necessary skills to meet the demands of a net zero future.
The shift toward sustainable practices will require specialized expertise which will incur transition costs, particularly for those working in production occupations such as assemblers and fabricators.
Despite a global 12% increase in workers acquiring green skills between 2022 and 2023, demand continues to outpace supply, with the number of job postings requiring at least one green skill rising by nearly 22% over the same period.
To fully capitalize on opportunities created by the green transition and harness them in a way that is fair and inclusive, prioritizing green skilling is essential.
Demographic shifts
The world is currently experiencing two fundamental demographic shifts: an aging and declining working age population predominantly in higher income economies, due to declining birth rates and longer life expectancy, and a growing working age population in many lower income economies, where younger populations are progressively entering the labour market.
In higher income nations, aging populations are increasing dependency ratios, potentially putting greater pressure on a smaller pool of working age individuals and raising concerns about long term labour availability.
In contrast, lower income economies may benefit from a demographic dividend.
Findings from the Future of Jobs Survey indicate that for 40% of employers worldwide, aging and declining working age populations are driving transformation, while 25% are being transformed by growing working age populations.
Compared to global averages, employers facing the effects of aging population are more pessimistic about talent availability and expect facing bigger challenges in attracting industry talent.
More encouragingly, with a shrinking labour pool, many of these companies increasingly prioritize transitioning current employees into growing roles as a key workforce strategy.
Employers expecting to be impacted by aging populations are more likely to accelerate process automation and advance workforce augmentation in the next five years.
Chapter 2: Jobs outlook
Technological change, the green transition, economic uncertainty, geoeconomic fragmentation and demographic shifts are reshaping the labour market.
This chapter analyses how employers expect various kinds of jobs to grow and decline in response to these macrotrends and assesses the role of each of these trends in contributing to labour market transformation.
Total job growth and loss
By combining respondents’ job growth and decline expectations with hard data on global employment collected by the ILO, the Future of Jobs Report 2025 estimates that, by 2030, on current predictions, new job creation and job displacement due to macrotrends will represent a combined total of 22% of today’s total formal jobs.
Specifically, macrotrend driven creation of new jobs is estimated to amount to 170 million jobs, equivalent to 14% of today’s total employment.
This growth is expected to be offset by the displacement of 92 million current jobs, or 8% of total employment, resulting in a net growth of 78 million jobs, 7% of today’s total employment, by 2030.
Growing and declining jobs
According to the surveyed executives, the fastest growing job roles by 2030, in percentage terms, tend to be driven by technological developments, such as advancements in AI and robotics and increasing digital access.
Leading the fastest growing jobs list are roles such as Big Data Specialists, FinTech Engineers, AI and Machine Learning Specialists and Software and Applications Developers.
Green and energy transition roles, including Autonomous and Electric Vehicle Specialists, Environmental Engineers, and Renewable Energy Engineers, also feature within the top 15 fastest growing roles.
By contrast, respondents expect the fastest declining roles to include various clerical roles, such as Cashiers and Ticket Clerks, alongside Administrative Assistants and Executive Secretaries, Printing Workers, and Accountants and Auditors.
Broadening digital access, AI and information processing technologies, and robots and autonomous systems are the primary drivers for this decline.
The presence of both Graphic Designers and Legal Secretaries just outside the top 10 fastest declining job roles, a first time prediction not seen in previous editions of the Future of Jobs Report, may illustrate GenAI’s increasing capacity to perform knowledge work.
Job decline in both roles is seen as driven by both AI and information processing technologies as well as by broadening digital access.
Largest growing roles
The highest growth in absolute numbers of jobs is driven by roles that make up the core of many economies.
Farmworkers top the list of the largest growing job roles in the next five years and are expected to see 35 million more jobs by 2030.
Delivery Drivers, Building Construction Workers, Salespersons and Food Processing Workers are also among the largest growing job types in the next five years.
Care jobs, including Nursing Professionals, Social Work and Counselling Professionals, and Personal Care Aides are expected to see significant growth over the next five years, driven by demographic trends, especially aging populations.
Education related roles such as University and Higher Education Teachers and Secondary Education Teachers are also predicted to be among the biggest job creators in absolute terms over the next five years globally.
Additionally, Software and Applications Developers, General and Operations Managers, and Project Managers, are among the job categories driving the most net job growth.
Conversely, in parallel to the fastest declining job roles, Clerical and Secretarial Workers are among the job categories predicted to see the largest net job decline in absolute terms.
Technological change and employment
Technology is predicted to be the most divergent driver of labour market change, with broadening digital access expected to both create and displace more jobs than any other macrotrend.
Trends in AI and information processing technology are expected to create 11 million jobs, while simultaneously displacing 9 million others, more than any other technology trend.
Robotics and autonomous systems are expected to be the largest net job displacer, with a net decline of 5 million jobs.
AI and information processing technologies are among the top three drivers of growth for all 10 of the fastest growing jobs.
Broadening digital access is a top three driver for nine out of these 10.
Robotics and autonomous systems technologies are a top three driver for seven out of these 10.
The shifting human machine frontier: automation versus augmentation
The interplay between humans, machines and algorithms is redefining job roles across industries.
Automation is expected to drive changes in people’s ways of working, with the proportional share of tasks performed solely or predominantly by humans expected to decline as technology becomes more versatile.
Future of Jobs Survey respondents estimate that, today, 47% of work tasks are performed mainly by humans alone, with 22% performed mainly by technology, machines and algorithms, and 30% completed by a combination of both.
By 2030, employers expect these proportions to be nearly evenly split across these three categories and approaches.
Globally, the expected reduction in the proportion of work tasks performed by humans is driven primarily by increased automation.
Of the nearly 15 percentage point reduction in the proportion of total work tasks delivered by humans in 2030 versus 2025, nearly 82% is attributable to advancing automation, while 19% is projected to derive from expanded human machine collaboration.
Importantly, this analysis only compares the 2025 and 2030 proportions of total task delivery attributable to human employees, technology or collaboration between the two, respectively, and does not consider the potential change in the absolute amount of work tasks getting done.
In other words, both machines and humans might be significantly more productive in 2030 – performing more or higher value tasks in the same or less amount of time than it would have taken them to do so in 2025 – so any concern about humans “running out of things to do” due to automation would be misplaced.
However, a potentially more complex question raised by these projections concerns the ongoing share of total economic value creation participated in by human workers.
If an increasing amount of a firm’s total output and income is derived from advanced machines and proprietary algorithms, to what extent will human workers be able to share in this prosperity?
It is in this context that the relevance of the third category and approach, human machine collaboration or “augmentation”, should be highlighted.
Technology could be designed and developed in a way that complements and enhances, rather than displaces, human work.
Talent development, reskilling and upskilling strategies may be designed and delivered in a way to enable and optimize human machine collaboration.
It is the investment decisions and policy choices made today that will shape these outcomes in the coming years.
At an industry level, while all sectors are expected to see a reduction in the proportion of work tasks performed by humans alone by 2030, they differ in the share of this reduction that is projected to be attributable to automation versus augmentation and human machine collaboration.
Insurance and Pensions Management and Telecommunications are leading the automation trend, with more than 95% of human standalone task share reduction in both sectors expected to derive from deeper automation.
By contrast, nearly half of the proportional reduction in work tasks done by humans alone in the Medical and Healthcare Services and Government and Public sectors are instead expected to be driven by increased augmentation and human machine collaboration.
In four sectors – Oil and Gas, Chemicals and Advanced Materials, Financial Services and Capital Markets, and Electronics – automation is projected not only to reduce the proportion of total work tasks predominantly done today standalone by humans, but even to reduce the share of total work tasks currently delivered through human machine collaboration.
Chapter 3: Skills outlook
This chapter presents the results of the Future of Jobs Survey concerning skills, as classified by the World Economic Forum’s Global Skills Taxonomy.
It begins by analysing respondents’ expectations of skill disruption by 2030, as well as the skills currently required for work and whether employers anticipate these skills will increase or decrease in importance over the next five years.
The chapter then assesses the skills expected to become core skills by 2030, based on their current significance and anticipated evolution.
It also contrasts the skills required for growing and declining jobs, revealing windows of opportunity for enabling dynamic job transitions.
Finally, it offers an overview of the key drivers of skill transformation and concludes with an exploration of anticipated training needs and trends.
Expected disruptions to skills
When the Future of Jobs Report was first published in 2016, surveyed employers expected that 35% of workers’ skills would face disruption in the coming years.
The COVID 19 pandemic, along with rapid advancements in frontier technologies, led to significant disruptions in working life and skills, prompting respondents to predict high levels of skills instability in subsequent editions of the report.
The post pandemic period, however, has seen employers adapt to these changes.
The accelerated adoption of digital tools, remote work solutions, and advanced technologies such as machine learning and generative AI provided companies with relevant experience to better understand the critical skills required to navigate rapid technological change.
Despite current uncertainty around the long term impact of generative AI, the expected ongoing pace of disruption of skills has begun to stabilize, albeit at a high level.
Overall, employers expect 39% of workers’ core skills to change by 2030.
While this represents significant ongoing skill disruption, it is down from 44% in 2023.
One element contributing to this finding may be a growing focus on continuous learning, upskilling and reskilling programmes, enabling companies to better anticipate and manage future skill requirements.
This is reflected in an increasing share of the workforce, 50%, having completed training as part of long term learning strategies compared to 2023, when the figure was 41%.
Core skills
Analytical thinking remains the top core skill for employers, with seven out of 10 companies considering it as essential.
This is followed by resilience, flexibility and agility, along with leadership and social influence, underscoring the critical role of adaptability and collaboration alongside cognitive skills.
Creative thinking and motivation and self awareness rank fourth and fifth, respectively.
This combination of cognitive, self efficacy and interpersonal skills within the top five emphasizes the importance ascribed by respondents to having an agile, innovative and collaborative workforce, where both problem solving abilities and personal resilience are critical for success.
The top 10 core skills are complemented by technological literacy, empathy and active listening, curiosity and lifelong learning, talent management, and service orientation and customer service.
Skills that reflect the important role of technical proficiency, strong interpersonal abilities, emotional intelligence, and a commitment to continuous learning demonstrate respondents’ expectation that workers must balance hard and soft skills to thrive in today’s work environments.
Compared to the 2023 edition of this report, some significant shifts in core skills have emerged.
Leadership and social influence, AI and big data, talent management, and service orientation and customer service have all seen marked increases in relevance.
Conversely, skills like dependability, attention to detail, and quality control have decreased in importance for organizations compared to the 2023 data.
Overall, leadership and social influence, resilience, flexibility and agility, and AI and big data have seen the most substantial increase in importance, with 22, 17, and 17 percentage point rises, respectively, in the share of respondents identifying them as core skills compared to the 2023 edition of the report.
Skills on the rise
According to employer expectations for the evolution of skills in the next five years, technological skills are projected to grow in importance more rapidly than any other type of skills.
Among these, AI and big data top the list as the fastest growing skills, followed closely by networks and cybersecurity and technological literacy.
Complementing these technology related skills, creative thinking and two socio emotional attitudes – resilience, flexibility, and agility, along with curiosity and lifelong learning – are also seen as rising in importance.
Also ranking among the top 10 skills on the rise are leadership and social influence, talent management, analytical thinking, and environmental stewardship.
These skills highlight the need for workers who can lead teams, manage talent effectively and adapt to sustainability and green transitions in an increasingly complex and interconnected world.
At the other end of the spectrum, respondents identified sensory processing abilities; reading, writing and mathematics; dependability and attention to detail; quality control; and global citizenship as among the most stable skills.
However, a small net decline is anticipated in reading, writing, and mathematics.
Manual dexterity, endurance, and precision stands out with a notable anticipated net decline, with 24% of respondents foreseeing a decrease in its importance.
Comparisons with previous editions of the Future of Jobs Survey reveal a notable shift in skill demands, with technology skills such as AI and big data, networks and cybersecurity, and environmental stewardship showing the largest net increase in the share of respondents identifying them as critical for the next five years.
Conversely, skills like reading, writing, and mathematics; manual dexterity, endurance, and precision; and dependability and attention to detail have seen the largest decline in projected future demand.
AI and big data are predicted to see significant growth across nearly all sectors.
In the top 10 industries, over 90% of respondents expect this skill to increase in use.
The lowest growth shares are observed in Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing and Accommodation, Food, and Leisure industries.
This highlights a broad based but uneven embrace of advanced technological skills across industries.
Core skills in 2030
Looking ahead to 2030, the report provides further insights into key priority areas for workforce development for organizations, by comparing core and emerging skills by 2030 based on their relative importance today and their future evolution.
Skills such as AI and big data; analytical thinking; creative thinking; resilience, flexibility and agility; and technological literacy are not only considered critical now but are also projected to become even more important.
Moreover, leadership and social influence, curiosity and lifelong learning, systems thinking, talent management, and motivation and self awareness solidify their importance, emphasizing the continued relevance of human centric skills amid rapid technological advances.
Meanwhile, networks and cybersecurity and environmental stewardship rank among the top 10 skills expected to increase significantly in use by 2030, yet they are not currently considered core skills for most organizations.
These emerging skills represent areas where businesses may need to anticipate growing demands and develop capabilities before they become critical.
On the other hand, skills that are core today, but expected to remain stable over the next five years without significant increase in use, include empathy and active listening, service orientation and customer service and resource management and operations.
Skill differences between growing and declining jobs
While a diverse set of skills is essential for navigating the evolving workforce landscape, contrasting the skills requirements particularly associated with growing jobs, and those associated with declining ones, reveals windows of opportunity that exist for enabling dynamic job transitions.
At an aggregate level across all growing and declining roles, resilience, flexibility and agility skills are the most significant differentiator between growing and declining job roles, ranking higher in both importance and proficiency for growing roles.
Programming and technological literacy also differentiates growing and declining roles, reflecting the increasing integration of technology across occupational fields.
Resource management and operations, and quality control skills also show marked gaps in both proficiency and importance.
Analytical thinking completes the list of top five skills for the importance gap.
These findings underscore the importance of targeted skills development efforts to support workers in transitioning to growing roles as well as to ensure employers can access a talent pool with the skills required for the future of work.
Drivers of skill disruption
Technological advances are expected to drive skills change more than any other trend over the next five years.
The increasing importance of AI and big data, networks and cybersecurity, and technological literacy is driven by the expansion of digital access and the integration of AI and information processing technologies.
These trends are not only seen as responsible for the growth of these three fastest growing skills but also for the rising importance of analytical thinking and systems thinking.
These shifts highlight the increasing complexity of decision making and the need for critical problem solving in a data driven world.
Robots and autonomous systems are also seen as a key driver of skills change, contributing to the increased demand for not only the three top growing skills, but also programming and systems thinking – skills essential for managing and optimizing interactions with autonomous technology.
Coupled with the rising demand for the three top growing skills, and programming, this trend underscores the importance of technological expertise and systems thinking as core skills in technical fields.
These capabilities are crucial for enabling employees to adapt to, and collaborate effectively with, automated systems across a range of industries.
While technology fuels demand for certain skills, it also accelerates the decline of others.
Skills such as manual dexterity, endurance, precision, and reading, writing, and mathematics are expected to diminish in relevance as digital access, AI and information processing, and robotics increasingly automate these tasks.
As discussed in more depth in Chapter 2, the primary impact of technologies such as GenAI on skills may lie in their potential for “augmenting” human skills through human machine collaboration, rather than in outright replacement, particularly given the continued importance of human centred skills.
These findings underscore an urgent need for appropriate reskilling and upskilling strategies to bridge emerging divides.
Such strategies will be essential in helping workers transition to roles that blend technical expertise with human centred capabilities, supporting a more adaptable workforce in an increasingly technology driven landscape.
Generative AI and human centred skills
Research conducted by Indeed for this report highlights the continued importance of human centred skills in an age of GenAI.
The analysis evaluates more than 2,800 granular skills according to GenAI’s capacity to substitute for a human in performing them.
Zero of the more than 2,800 skills assessed were determined to exhibit “very high capacity” to be replaced by the current generation of GenAI tools.
The majority of examined skills, 69%, were determined to have either “very low capacity” or “low capacity” to be substituted, indicating that GenAI currently remains limited in performing tasks that require physical execution, nuanced judgment or hands on application.
Skills rooted in human interaction – including empathy and active listening, and sensory processing abilities – and manual dexterity, endurance and precision, currently show no substitution potential due to their physical and deeply human components.
Reskilling and upskilling strategies
Having anticipated significant skill disruptions, employers have increasingly invested in reskilling and upskilling initiatives to align workforce skills with evolving demands.
Future of Jobs Survey respondents indicate that 50% of their workforce has completed training as part of their learning and development initiatives.
This reflects a positive global trend compared to 2023, when only 41% of the workforce had received training.
The rise in training completion is evident across nearly all industries, suggesting a growing recognition of the importance of continuous skill development.
Looking ahead, according to surveyed employers, for a representative sample of 100 workers 41 will not require significant training by 2030; 11 will require training, but it will not be accessible to them in the foreseeable future; and 29 will require training and be upskilled within their current roles.
Additionally, employers anticipate that 19 out of 100 workers will require training and will be reskilled and redeployed within their organization by 2030.
The anticipated need for training varies significantly across industries and geographies.
The share of employees estimated as unlikely to receive upskilling opportunities is somewhat uniform across industries and geographies, suggesting that while the demand for skills may vary, access to reskilling and upskilling opportunities remains similarly constrained globally.
When it comes to funding of reskilling and upskilling initiatives, employers predominantly expect to fund their own training programmes.
The second most common funding mechanism is free of cost training, followed by government and public private funding.
The most common outcomes employers expect from their investment in training are enhanced productivity, cited by 77% of respondents, and improved competitiveness, 70%.
Talent retention ranks as the third most important expected outcome of training programmes.
Transitioning existing employees to new jobs or evolving roles is identified by 52%, while 48% expect training to increase talent mobility across different roles.
Chapter 4: Workforce strategies
This chapter discusses workforce strategies that employers anticipate adopting in response to the macrotrends shaping the future of work and key barriers to organizational transformation.
It also analyses employers’ outlook on talent availability from now to 2030, and explores planned workplace practices and policies to achieve their organization’s business goals, with a particular focus on the shifting relationship between humans and technologies.
Barriers to transformation
Skill gaps in the labour market are the primary barrier to business transformation perceived by Future of Jobs Survey respondents for the 2025 to 2030 period, cited by 63% of surveyed employers.
This is even more pronounced than the results described in the 2023 edition of the report, where skills gaps in the local labour market also topped the transformation barriers, backed by 60% of executives.
This skill challenge persists across almost all industries and geographies, ranking first in 52 out of 55 economies and 19 out of 22 sectors.
The second most significant perceived barrier is organizational culture and resistance to change, identified by 46% of respondents as a key obstacle, which highlights the anticipated challenge of aligning internal processes, organizational structures, hierarchies and mindsets in responding to the trends and disruptions companies expect to face.
Regulatory concerns are considered the third most relevant barrier, identified by 39% of employers.
Moreover, 32% of respondents highlight a lack of adequate data and technical infrastructure as an additional obstacle.
Other barriers, such as shortage of investment capital and insufficient understanding of opportunities, are cited less frequently.
Talent availability outlook
Employers’ outlook on talent availability has decreased compared to the results highlighted in the report’s 2023 edition.
This year, only 29% of businesses expect talent availability to improve over the 2025 to 2030 period, a drop from 39% in 2023.
By contrast, 42% of employers expect talent availability to decline over this period, resulting in a net negative talent availability outlook and highlighting increasing concern among businesses regarding their ability to find the right future talent.
However, employers remain more broadly optimistic about the outlook for talent development.
Seven in 10 respondents expect improvements in talent development within their organization by 2030.
With regard to talent retention, employers are similarly less positive than in the report’s previous edition: only 44% of surveyed organizations expect improvements in their ability to retain talent, a decline from 53% two years ago.
Workforce strategy
Upskilling the workforce emerges as the most common workforce strategy in response to macrotrends, over the 2025 to 2030 period, with 85% of surveyed employers anticipating adopting this approach.
Upskilling is identified as a top three priority across all geographies and economies at all income levels.
Process and task automation is expected to be the second most common workforce strategy, with 73% of employers planning to accelerate their use of this approach – down from 80% as noted in the report’s 2023 edition.
Additionally, 63% of employers intend to complement and augment their workforce with new technologies.
Regarding adjusting the composition of their workforce, 70% of organizations surveyed plan to hire new staff with emerging in demand skills, 51% intend to transition staff from declining to growing roles internally, while 41% foresee staff reductions due to skills obsolescence.
Improving talent availability
The importance of supporting employee health and well being has newly emerged as a top priority to increase talent availability over the 2025 to 2030 period.
64% of employers now see promise in this approach.
Additional business practices identified as promising to increase talent availability include providing effective reskilling and upskilling opportunities, highlighted by 63% of organizations.
Improving talent progression and promotion remains a key focus for 62% of surveyed organizations.
Higher wages are identified as a priority by 50% of respondents.
Tapping into diverse talent pools continues to increase in importance, with almost half of surveyed employers now emphasizing the potential of this strategy.
These findings highlight the potential of skills first approaches in identifying and attracting talent based on skills rather than traditional credentials.
Approaches to skills assessment
Removing academic degree requirements and conducting skill based hiring is an increasingly recognized approach to expanding talent availability.
Work experience continues to be the most common assessment mechanism in hiring processes, with 81% of businesses expecting to continue to rely on it over the 2025 to 2030 period.
This is consistent with previous editions of the report, underlining the value employers place on practical, on the job learning and achievements.
The second most common method of evaluation is skills assessments, expected to be utilized by 48% of employers, highlighting a growing emphasis on directly testing candidates’ competencies rather than relying solely on their resumes.
In addition, psychometric tests are planned to be used by 34% of businesses, reflecting an increased focus on evaluating candidates’ behavioural traits, cognitive abilities and cultural fit.
The requirement of a university degree features in third place of employers’ approaches to skills assessment, with 43% of respondents expecting to continue to use degrees as a requirement by 2030.
Comparison with the previous edition of this report shows that employers are increasingly focusing on work experience and psychometric testing over traditional credentials like university degrees.
This shift signals a growing recognition that practical skills and cognitive abilities may be more indicative of future job performance than formal educational qualifications, in addition to expanding the talent pool.
Adopting a skills first approach can broaden talent pools and strengthen talent pipelines for future roles.
Workforce strategies in response to AI adoption
The Future of Jobs Survey finds that 86% of employers expect AI and information processing technologies to transform their business by 2030.
In the Financial Services and Electronics sectors, anticipated AI exposure is notably higher than the global average.
By contrast, employers in sectors such as Energy Technology and Utilities and Government and Public Sector expect lower exposure to AI disruption by 2030.
Larger organizations are considering it more likely that their business model will be transformed by AI.
Complementing the Future of Jobs Survey, the World Economic Forum’s Executive Opinion Survey captures insights from more than 11,000 executives worldwide.
Regarding barriers to AI adoption, half of executives worldwide highlight a lack of skills to support adoption as the top barrier.
This is closely followed by a lack of vision among managers and leaders, at 43%.
Other obstacles include high costs of AI products and services, lack of customization to local business needs, complex regulations around AI and data usage, and limited consumer demand.
Overall, these results point to a persistent gap in skills required for AI adoption, both for managers and workers.
In response to expected AI disruption, reskilling and upskilling of the existing workforce to work more effectively alongside AI emerges as the most anticipated workforce strategy for companies headquartered in 45 out of the 55 economies covered by the report.
By 2030, 77% of surveyed employers plan to implement this strategy.
In addition, 69% of respondents plan to recruit talent skilled in AI tool design and enhancement, and 62% anticipate focusing on hiring individuals with skills to work with AI.
Almost half of organizations are expecting to reorient their business models toward new AI driven opportunities, while 47% plan to transition employees from AI disrupted roles to other positions.
While most employers plan to hire new people with AI relevant skills, a significant share, 41%, also expect to downsize their workforce as AI capabilities to replicate roles expand.
Chapter 5: Region, economy and industry insights
The impact of macrotrends on labour markets over the 2025 to 2030 period will have both common and sector and region specific characteristics across industries and geographies around the world.
This chapter highlights key findings from the Future of Jobs Survey as they relate to the expected jobs landscape, anticipated skills needs and planned workforce strategies of employers at regional, economy and industry levels – and offers insights into how businesses in specific economies and sectors are navigating these transformations.
Cross industry trends and scope for collaboration
The anticipated impact of macrotrends on the future of jobs is multifaceted across both geographies and sectors.
Specific industries are seeing points of convergence as well as distinct barriers to transformation and thus are prioritizing different workforce strategies in response to labour market transformation by 2030.
While 19 out of 22 global industries covered by the report identify skills gaps in the local labour market as the top barrier to industry transformation, each sector also anticipates distinct additional challenges in the next five years.
In both the Government and Public sector and Medical and Healthcare sector, for example, organizational culture and resistance to change features as the most selected barrier to transformation.
In the Real Estate sector, inability to attract talent to the industry is seen as the key obstacle.
Four sectors – Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing; Information and Technology Services; Oil and Gas; and Retail and Wholesale of Consumer Goods – view data and technical infrastructure as one of the key barriers.
The fact that Future of Jobs Survey respondents predominantly evaluate talent availability challenges as industry level issues points to potentially untapped opportunities for industry stakeholders to collaborate and implement customized intra industry or cross industry solutions.
However, employers across industries often exhibit different preferences over workforce strategies.
Reaching close to a consensus view, upskilling is selected as the top workforce strategy in 20 industries and ranks second in the remaining two: Electronics and Insurance and Pensions Management.
Oil and Gas and Telecommunications are the industries most committed to upskilling.
There exist more notable industry differences with regard to anticipated use of technologies to either fully automate processes and tasks or complement and augment the human workforce.
While most industries aim to pursue a balance of both automation focused and augmentation focused workforce strategies over the 2025 to 2030 period, 87% of respondents in Electronics expect to focus on automating tasks, whereas only 48% plan to focus on workforce augmentation.
Industries including Insurance and Pensions as well as Telecommunications exhibit a similar automation to augmentation gap.
By contrast, sectors such as Healthcare, Agriculture and Government report a higher preference for augmentation over automation.
Additionally, while hiring staff with new skills to meet emerging business needs features among the top three workforce strategies in 17 out of 22 sectors, upskilling and transitioning existing staff from declining to growing job roles appears as an untapped opportunity.
Only the Automotive and Aerospace, Electronics and Real Estate sectors currently aim to prioritize such job transitions as one of their top three workforce strategies by 2030.
Financial Services and Capital Markets
Financial Services is one of the sectors where expected AI exposure is particularly high.
The industry profile shows AI and information processing technologies as the dominant technology driver of transformation.
The sector also places particularly high importance on networks and cybersecurity, technological literacy and AI and big data.
Financial Services employers expect a combination of automation, hiring and reskilling.
Skills gaps remain a significant barrier to transformation, alongside organisational culture, regulation and technical infrastructure.
The sector’s AI workforce response also demonstrates the importance of transition alongside acquisition: employers expect to reskill their current workforce to work alongside AI while also hiring talent capable of designing and working with AI systems.
Insurance and Pensions Management
Insurance and Pensions Management shows one of the strongest expected shifts towards automation.
The industry places particularly high value on curiosity and lifelong learning, with 83% of respondents identifying it as a core skill compared with a global average of 50%.
Resilience, flexibility and agility are also considered especially important in this sector, with 94% emphasizing their importance compared with a global average of 67%.
Insurance and Pensions Management is also among the sectors where the expected reduction in work performed predominantly by people is most heavily driven by automation rather than augmentation.
At the same time, the sector expects significant investment in employee reskilling, talent progression and workforce mobility.
Energy Technology and Utilities
Energy Technology and Utilities has a distinctive combination of technological, infrastructure and workforce pressures.
The sector expects AI and information processing technologies to have a major impact while also navigating energy transition, technical infrastructure requirements and changing skill demand.
Networks and cybersecurity are among the fastest growing skill requirements for the sector.
Curiosity and lifelong learning, technological literacy, leadership and environmental stewardship also rise in importance.
Employers expect substantial reskilling requirements as technology moves deeper into operational environments, although AI exposure is lower than in sectors such as Financial Services.
Information and Technology Services
Information and Technology Services is already one of the most technologically exposed industries, but the report suggests its workforce challenge is not solved simply because employees work in technology.
Programming skills receive greater emphasis in the sector than the global average, while AI and big data, resilience, technological literacy and curiosity continue to rise.
Information and Technology Services also identifies data and technical infrastructure as one of the major barriers to transformation.
The industry continues to expect significant training requirements despite already having comparatively high uptake of reskilling and upskilling.
This reinforces a broader point across the report: early technology exposure does not eliminate workforce transition. It can increase the pace at which skills and roles need to evolve.
What the report means for workforce transformation
Taken together, the report presents workforce transformation as a portfolio of decisions rather than a single programme.
Organisations have to decide which work will remain predominantly human, which work will move to technology and which work will become collaborative.
They then need to understand what those decisions do to roles.
Role changes create new skill requirements.
Skill requirements create choices between upskilling, reskilling, internal mobility, external hiring and workforce reduction.
Those choices cannot be made reliably from aggregate workforce averages alone.
The report’s own numbers show why.
If 39% of skills change, the same employee may remain in the organisation but perform materially different work.
If 19 in every 100 workers need reskilling and redeployment, internal mobility becomes part of transformation execution rather than simply an HR programme.
If 70% of employers intend to recruit new skills while 51% expect to move existing employees internally, leaders need to distinguish where an external skill gap actually exists and where the capability is already present inside the organisation.
And if 41% expect workforce reductions alongside 47% expecting internal transitions from AI disrupted roles, workforce planning needs to identify those groups before the operating model is implemented.
The central problem therefore moves from forecasting aggregate headcount to understanding transition at the individual and role level.
What this means for WORK SELF
The report strengthens a theme running across the research we have reviewed from McKinsey, Deloitte, EY, BCG, Accenture and KPMG.
Technology adoption is moving faster than organisational redesign.
The World Economic Forum adds a labour market and skills perspective to the same problem.
The future organisation is not simply one with fewer people or more AI. It is one in which the distribution of work between people and technology changes continuously.
That creates four connected questions for senior leaders:
Which work will change?
Which roles will change with it?
Which employees can transition into the future model?
What intervention does each person need before the transition happens?
Generic workforce averages cannot answer those questions.
Neither can a training catalogue on its own.
The workforce transition has to be mapped against the future operating model, with visibility into employee skills, readiness, pathway fit and transition risk before decisions on redeployment, retraining, hiring or restructuring become irreversible.
For WORK SELF, this is the role of Workforce Reinvention Intelligence.
Maya Enterprise is designed to give leaders visibility into how the workforce can transition as AI, automation and new operating models change the work itself.
Conclusion
The transformation of the jobs and skills landscape anticipated by this year’s Future of Jobs Survey respondents will have significant impacts on businesses, industries, governments and workers worldwide.
It is crucial to develop nuanced forecasts, identify appropriate workforce and talent strategies, and make informed decisions on managing disruptions to jobs and skills for employers and workers alike.
This edition of the Future of Jobs Report presents a mixed picture with regard to the 2025 to 2030 outlook for the global labour market.
On the one hand, amid newly emerging drivers such as increasing geoeconomic fragmentation, rising cost of living and the widespread adoption of AI tools in the workforce, global macrotrends create an ever more complex environment for policy makers, employers and workers to navigate, and uncertainty remains high.
On the other hand, the report finds a strongly net positive global employment outlook, with a continuing decrease in the rate of skills obsolescence, as reskilling, upskilling and redeployment initiatives implemented in recent years begin to register in the data and materialize their global workforce impact.
Employers across all industries and geographies demonstrate greater awareness and willingness than in previous editions of the report to proactively engage in addressing workforce and talent challenges, and to do so by pragmatically leveraging innovative approaches such as skills based hiring policies and a more strategic focus on diversity, equity and inclusion.
However, skills gaps remain the predominant barrier to transformation across most industries and economies, and this year’s edition of the Future of Jobs Report captures some early signals of likely future priority areas for constructive multistakeholder engagement, including a need for proactive and dynamic job transitions across a wider and growing range of job roles and questions concerning the appropriate future balance between deeper automation and broader augmentation.
This last point reflects a core tenet of the Future of Jobs Report since its inception: that the future of work can be shaped for better outcomes and that it is the policy, business and investment decisions made by leaders today that will determine these outcomes and the future space for action.
The bottom line
The headline is not that AI will remove jobs. The more important finding is that work, roles and skills will be redistributed at scale.
Employers expect 39% of skills to change. Fifty nine in every 100 workers will need training. Nineteen will need to be reskilled and moved into a different role. Skills gaps are already the number one barrier to transformation. At the same time, organisations are accelerating automation, recruiting new AI capability and attempting to move existing employees into the jobs that remain and emerge.
The execution question for the enterprise is therefore not simply how much work AI can automate.
It is whether the organisation can see, before the transition happens, which work changes, which people can move with it and what each person needs to succeed in the new operating model.
