Davos, Switzerland — In the next five years, millions of jobs will be created. Governments, employers, and education institutions, therefore, need to ready themselves for taking advantage of this opportunity, says Till Leopold, Head of Work, Wages and Job Creation at the World Economic Forum. Leopold spoke with TRENDS at Davos about the future of jobs globally.
Leopold addressed the key findings in the Future of Jobs Report 2025 that was issued during the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos. The key report findings highlighted that there will be 78 million new job opportunities by 2030 but urgent upskilling is needed to prepare workforces.
Some of the fastest-growing jobs found in technology, data and AI, but growth also expected for core economy roles including delivery drivers, care roles, educators and farm workers.
The fastest-growing skills by 2030 will include technological skills alongside human skills, such as cognitive skills and collaboration. Collective action in the public, private and education sectors is urgently needed to address the growing skills gaps, the report said.
What are the key takeaways from the Future of Jobs Report 2025? What part of them was surprising? How do the findings of this report compare to previous research?
This is the fifth edition of the report, and we’ve done this for one decade now. Really, we do have some data also now to look back to and see how things have changed, which is really exciting. But for this year, I think some of the key findings that we have are obviously at the headline level, what we’ve been told by the people we talked to for the report is that over the period 2025 to 2030, we could expect a net creation of 78 million additional jobs in the global economy driven by these global macro trends that the report is analyzing. It’s actually a very positive story, 78 million more jobs. However, if you dig into that, underneath it, there’s a lot of turbulence. Actually, that number is composed of 170 million new jobs being created at the same time as 92 million jobs being displaced by some of these same trends. While there is a big net of a positive number, the challenge, of course, is that the requirements, the skills, and the way that these new jobs look might be quite different from the jobs that are being displaced and that they’re going away.
The question is, how can governments, employers, education institutions, and people themselves all work together to make sure that we’re ready to take advantage of this opportunity? Now, you were asking about the key surprising things, and new findings this year. There are a couple.
We’ve done this report every two years for the last decade, but this is the first time that there really is overwhelming consensus from the respondents that upskilling and reskilling is an absolute priority. We always, of course, had, let’s say more than 50 percent of people affirming that. But in this edition of the report, it is 80 percent to 90 percent across all of the 22 industries, the 55 countries that we’re talking to. There appears to be a significant shift in the level of urgency and focus people are giving to these issues. Then a few other fascinating findings. If you look at the strategies employers are hoping to use to build a resilient workforce, to attract the best talent, there’s a newfound prioritization on emphasizing the health and well-being of the workforce, which is the topmost strategy that employers are hoping to use for talent attraction over these next five years. In the previous edition of the report, that was not even in the top five. It also seems to have shot up for various reasons to the top of the ranking, which we, of course, find interesting. There’s also a very big new emphasis on looking to more diverse talent pools, finding wherever it is, really looking at skills rather than resumes and accreditations. That, too, was one of the less-picked strategies in previous editions of this report. But in this edition, more than 40 percent of the respondents are telling us that this is now a top priority for them.
We've done this report every two years for the last decade, but this is the first time that there really is overwhelming consensus from the respondents that upskilling and reskilling is an absolute priority. We always, of course, had, let's say more than 50 percent of people affirming that. But in this edition of the report, it is 80 percent to 90 percent across all of the 22 industries, the 55 countries that we're talking to.
You mentioned the overwhelming consensus. Do you see discussions centered around various stakeholders bridging the skills and age gaps? What are some of the expectations from Davos 25 in this regard?
I think, first of all, what are the issues around which people need to build the consensus? These are some of the big macro trends that are shifting the labor market. There are five of them that we heard about in the report. The first one, of course, is technological change. So, new technology is both seen as the largest driver of new job creation and also as the biggest disruptor. It’s at the same time the biggest positive trend and also then the trend causing the most disturbance in the system. But then more than in previous editions of the report as well, we are hearing about geo-economic and geo-political factors also affecting considerations around the future workforce. Of course, questions about trade and supply chains, and location decisions for the workforce. Then similarly, also demographic shift. Both aging and shrinking workforces in some advanced economies and then there’s a large and growing working-age population in many countries of the global south and beyond. Within actually the next generation, there will be 50 percent more workers in today’s lower-income economies compared to today.
In terms of the consensus we are seeing, of course, I think this agenda is too vast to just have the same agenda for the whole world. But I think we see a few areas around which there is a much broader convergence of opinions and identifying the right trends. Maybe I can just start by emphasizing three. I think the first one is around this question of artificial intelligence. I think there’s this emerging consensus that we need to equip people to work alongside technology, alongside AI, to create what you could call augmentation. To enable people to do more and do things better than they were able to do before, rather than looking to displace and replace humans through technology. We see a much bigger emphasis on that. That is a question for the short term rather than a more abstract conceptual thing seeing the things that we see.
The second one, I think, is really around putting skills at the center of the solution. What is sometimes called a skills-first approach, de-emphasizing people’s CV experience and formal accreditations and just really trying to understand in a very nuanced way what skills people have and then build around that. Also, to do that, you need to have some collective agreement on having the same language of skills, the same definition, the same taxonomies, if you want, of how you talk about skills.
But you also do need it from the government, from the regulators and public institutions to employers, to education institutions and individuals that need to get these credentials, and so on. You really need a broad ecosystem that you need to build for that. I think we see that ecosystem coming together a lot more than even just two years ago. Third, I think, confirming trends that were already underway in previous years that we saw in the report, but there’s this emphasis on basically two types of skills that are worth emphasizing. The first one is, perhaps unsurprisingly, technology skills; advanced technology skills, AI expertise, big data analysis, programming, etc., but also just basic technology literacy is one of the key requirements in more and more roles. It’s not just about being an expert programmer, but just a basic familiarity with working with technologies. These are some of the fastest-growing skills. But then alongside that, we see this focus on what we call human skills. So, resilience, creativity, agility, and cooperation with others are equally being emphasized and sought after by employers. It is really the convergence of these two sets of skills that will equip many and most of us for the jobs of the future. There’s also a growing consensus that these are the skills that we should focus on.
Is there any specific feature for the job market in the Middle East? Around 60 percent of the population in the Middle East is below the age of 30. Looking at the trends during the past several years, what is about to happen in the job market? What would be your advice for those who are about to enter the market?
You mentioned that demographic factors are a big driving force of change in the Middle East. Of course, again, the region is very diverse in terms of its economies. It’s a bit hard to generalize, but indeed, young growing populations are, of course, a huge asset in general for the economies of the region. There is a lot of collaboration needed to enable young people to take advantage of these opportunities. Alongside that, we also see a lot of emphasis in the region on moving to a greener economic model. The energy transition, climate change adaptation and mitigation also being a key factor. What is interesting here is that while perhaps in absolute terms, this shift to a greener economy isn’t the biggest driver of change that the report identifies, it’s a trend that is expected to create five times more new jobs than being displaced by it. Well, there obviously could be some concerns also for existing jobs moving away from a more carbon-based economy. But what we’re hearing from employees of the region is this very positive expectation of the opportunities in the ‘greening’. I think that is a really interesting sector for the future.
Specifically, speaking to young people, I would say, again, in particular, that more technical technological skills but also these human skills are the key basis for being prepared for these new economies. But then the other thing is just that change is a constant in these next five years in this labor market that we’re seeing. There’s one measure that we always look at is essentially the shelf life of skills. We expect that over this period, 2025 to 2030, about 40 percent of all existing skills in any one given job are likely to change. If we were, for example, today entering a five-year program perfectly aiming to equip you for the future labor market, by the time you graduate from that five-year program, two out of the five years would already be essentially outdated, even in the best program, just from the pace of change. Now, of course, many people do not have the luxury of going on such a long study program or they already are in the labor market. For many people, this change is just much more continuous. Lifelong learning, I think, is a key factor. To not be too influenced by whatever in the beginning of 2025 is seen as the hottest job. Change is the only constant here. It is important to be ready for that as well with some resilience and agility around it. (Edited by Hilal Mir)