Fourth edition of wide-ranging Future of Jobs Survey includes 803 companies, 11.3M workers, spanning 45 economies, exploring workforce trends. The Survey covers questions of macrotrends and technology trends, their impact on jobs, their impact on skills, and the workforce transformation strategies businesses plan to use, across the 2023-2027 timeframe.
Employers estimate that 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted in the next five years while Technology adoption will remain a key driver of business transformation in the next five years. The fastest-declining roles relative to their size today are driven by technology and digitalization. The largest losses are expected in administrative roles and in traditional security, factory and commerce roles. Large-scale job growth is expected in education, agriculture and digital commerce and trade. Analytical thinking and creative thinking remain the most important skills for workers in 2023. Six in 10 workers will require training before 2027, but only half of workers are seen to have access to adequate training opportunities today. Forty-five percent of businesses see funding for skills training as an effective intervention available to governments seeking to connect talent to employment.
Surveyed companies report that investing in learning and on-the-job training and automating processes are the most common workforce strategies which will be adopted to deliver their organizations’ business goals. Respondents express confidence in developing their existing workforce, however, they are less optimistic regarding the outlook for talent availability in the next five years. A majority of companies will prioritize women (79%), youth under 25 (68%) and those with disabilities (51%) as part of their DEI programmes.
