Economic, health and geopolitical trends have created mixed outcomes for labor markets around the world in 2023. While tight labor markets prevail in high-income countries, low- and lower-middle-income countries continue to experience higher unemployment than before the COVID-19 pandemic. At the individual level, labor market outcomes also differ, as workers with primary education and women face lower employment rates. At the same time, real wages are falling due to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, and changing worker expectations and concerns about the quality of work are becoming a more significant issue globally.
The fourth edition of the survey has the broadest coverage to date by topic, geography and industry. The Future of Jobs survey combines the views of 803 companies – together employing more than 11.3 million workers – across 27 industry clusters and 45 economies from all world regions. The survey looks at macro and technology trends, their impact on jobs, their impact on skills and the workforce transformation strategies that businesses plan to use in the period 2023-2027.
Technology replacement will remain a chief mover of business revolution and change over the next five years. More than 85% of organizations surveyed identified the increasing adoption of new and frontier technologies and the expansion of digital access as the trends most likely to lead to transformation in their organization. The wider application of environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards within their organizations will also have a significant impact.
The other most impressive trends are macroeconomic: rising costs of living and slow economic growth. The impact of investment to support the green transition was assessed as the sixth most impactful macro trend, followed by supply shortages and consumer expectations of social and environmental issues. While it is still expected to transform almost half of the companies in the next five years, the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, increased geopolitical divisions and demographic dividends in developing and emerging economies were ranked lower by respondents as drivers of business development.
The biggest influences on job creation and destruction come from environmental, technological and economic trends. Among the macro trends listed, businesses predict that the strongest net job creation effect will be driven by investments that facilitate the transition of businesses to the environment, the wider application of ESG standards and supply chains becoming more localized, although job growth will be offset by some job displacement in each case.
Adaptation to climate change and the demographic dividend in developing and emerging economies are also highly rated as net job creators. Technological progress through increased adoption of new and frontier technologies and better digital access is expected to lead to job growth in more than half of the companies surveyed, offset by expected job displacement in one-fifth of companies
In terms of technology adoption, big data, cloud computing and AI have a high probability of adoption. More than 75% of companies are considering implementing these technologies in the next five years. The data also shows the impact of digitization of trade and commerce. Digital platforms and applications are the technologies most likely to be adopted by organizations surveyed, with 86% of companies expecting to incorporate them into their operations in the next five years.
E-commerce and digital commerce are expected to be adopted by 75% of businesses. Technology in second place includes education and workforce technologies, with 81% of companies looking to implement these technologies by 2027. The adoption of robots, energy storage and distributed ledger technologies is further down the list.
The impact of most technologies on jobs is expected to be net positive over the next five years. Big Data Analytics, Climate Change Key Findings May 2023 Future of Jobs Report 2023 and environmental management technologies and encryption and cybersecurity are expected to be the biggest drivers of job growth. Agricultural technology, digital platforms and applications, e-commerce and digital commerce, and artificial intelligence are expected to lead to significant labor market disruption, with a substantial proportion of companies predicting job losses within their organizations, offset by job growth elsewhere, leading to a net positive. All but two technologies are expected to create net job opportunities in the next five years: humanoid robots and non-humanoid robots.
Employers expect a structural exit of 23% of jobs in the next five years. This can be interpreted as an aggregate disruption rate, which is a mixture of newly created jobs added and declining jobs that have been eliminated. Respondents to this year’s Future of Jobs survey expect above-average attrition in supply chain and transportation and media, entertainment and sports, and below-average attrition in manufacturing as well as consumer goods retail and wholesale. Of the 673 million jobs reported in the data set in this report, respondents expect structural job growth of 69 million jobs and a decline of 83 million jobs. This equates to a net decline of 14 million jobs, or 2% of current employment.
The human-machine boundary has shifted, and businesses are introducing automation into their operations more slowly than previously thought. Organizations today estimate that 34% of all business-related tasks are performed by machines and the remaining 66% by humans. This represents a negligible 1% increase in the level of automation estimated by respondents to the Future of Jobs Survey for 2020.
This pace of automation is contrary to the 2020 survey respondents’ expectation that nearly half (47%) of business tasks will be automated in the next five years. Today, respondents revised their expectations for future automation, predicting that 42% of business tasks will be automated by 2027. Task automation in 2027 is expected to vary from 35% reasoning and decision-making to 65% information and data processing. However, while expectations of machines displacing physical and manual labour have decreased, reasoning, communication, and coordination—all qualities with a comparative advantage for humans—are expected to increase.
A combination of macro trends and technology adoption will drive specific areas of job growth and decline: –
Most pacy expanding functions comparative to their range and scope today are led by technology, digitization and sustainability. Most of the steadfast swelling characters are technology-based work jobs. Artificial intelligence and machine learning specialists are at the top of the record of fast-expanding works, after that sustainability specialists, commercial intelligence analysts and information security analysts. Renewable energy engineers and solar energy engineers and systems engineers are relatively fast-growing roles as economies shift towards renewable energy.
– The fastest shrinking roles relative to their size today are driven by technology and digitization. Most of the fastest declining roles are clerical or secretarial roles, with bank tellers and related clerks, postal service clerks, cashiers and cashiers and data clerks expected to decline the fastest.
– Large job growth is expected in education, agriculture and digital trade and commerce. Jobs in the education sector are expected to grow by around 10%, leading to 3 million additional jobs for vocational and university and college teachers. Jobs for agricultural professionals, especially agricultural machinery operators, are expected to grow by about 30%, leading to an additional 3 million jobs. Around 4 million digitally enabled roles such as e-commerce specialists, digital transformation specialists and digital marketing and strategy specialists are expected to grow.
– The biggest losses are expected in administrative roles and in traditional security, manufacturing and business roles. Research organizations predict 26 million fewer jobs in record-keeping and administrative roles, including cashiers and cashiers, by 2027; Data entry, bookkeeping, accounting and payroll accountants; and administrative and executive secretaries, led primarily by digitization and automation.
– Based on Reasoning and analyzing with innovative judgement stood on the most vital skills for labor class in 2023. Analytical thinking is considered a key skill by more companies than any other skill, accounting for an average of 9% of key skills reported by companies. Creative thinking, another cognitive skill, ranks second, ahead of the three self-efficacy abilities—resilience, flexibility, and agility; motivation and self-awareness; and curiosity and lifelong learning – in recognition of the importance of workers’ ability to adapt to disrupted workplaces. Reliability and attention to detail is in sixth place behind technological literacy. The top 10 essential skills are complemented by two attitudes related to working with others – empathy and active listening and leadership and social influence – as well as quality control.
Employers estimate that 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted in the next five years. Cognitive skills are reported to be gaining in importance the fastest, reflecting the increasing importance of complex problem-solving in the workplace. Research firms report that the importance of creative thinking is growing slightly faster than that of analytical thinking. Technological literacy is the third fastest-growing basic skill. Self-efficacy skills rank above working with others in increasing importance of skills reported by businesses.
The social-emotional attitudes that businesses see as the fastest growing in importance are curiosity and lifelong learning; resilience, flexibility and agility; and motivation and self-awareness. Systems thinking, AI and big data, talent management and service orientation and customer service round out the top 10 growing skills. While respondents did not see any skills as a net decline, a significant minority of companies value reading, writing and math; global citizenship; sensory processing skills; and manual dexterity, endurance, and precision are of diminishing importance to their workers.
Six out of 10 workers will require training by 2027, but only half of workers today have access to adequate training opportunities. The highest priority for skills training in 2023-2027 is analytical thinking, to represent 10% of training initiatives on average. The second priority for workforce development is the promotion of creative thinking, which will be the subject of 8% of initiatives aimed at improving skills. Training workers to use AI and big data is ranked third among corporate skills training priorities in the next five years and will be prioritized by 42% of companies surveyed.
Employers also plan to focus on developing workers’ leadership and social influence skills (40% of companies); resilience, flexibility and agility (32%); and curiosity and lifelong learning (30%). Two-thirds of companies expect a return on their skills training investment within one year of the investment, whether in the form of increased mobility across roles, increased worker satisfaction or increased worker productivity.
The skills that companies say are growing in importance the fastest are not always reflected in corporate upskilling strategies. In addition to top cognitive skills, there are two skills that companies are prioritizing much more than their current importance to their workforce would suggest: artificial intelligence and big data, as well as leadership and social influence. Companies rank AI and big data 12th in their skills strategies than in their core skills rankings, and report investing an estimated 9% of their retraining efforts in them – a larger share than highly ranked creative thinking, suggesting that although AI and big data are part of fewer strategies, they tend to be a more important element when they are included.
Leadership and Social Influence ranks five places higher than its current importance suggests, and is the highest-ranked attitude. Other skills being strategically emphasized in business are design and user experience (up nine places), environmental management (up 10 places), marketing and media (up six places) and network and cyber security (up five places above).
Respondents express confidence in developing their existing workforce but are less optimistic about the outlook for talent availability over the next five years. Accordingly, organizations identify skills gaps and the inability to attract talent as key barriers to industry transformation. In response, 48% of companies identified improving talent progression and promotion processes as a key business practice that can increase talent availability for their organization, ahead of offering higher wages (36%) and offering effective retraining and upskilling (34%).
Click here for Report @ World Economic Forum: Future of Jobs Report 2023
