The Future of Jobs Report 2023

This report by the World Economic Forum explores how jobs and skills will evolve over the next five years. It offers analysis of employer expectations to provide new insights on how socio-economic and technology trends will shape the workplace of the future.

Nearly half of the skills that people are using in the workplace is going to change in the next 4 to 5 years.

The report unpacks how businesses are expecting to navigate labour-market changes from 2023 to 2027 due to green transitions, technology, the rise of AI, and the changing economy. It provides a snapshot of the world of work now, and a look into where we are going.

The report addresses questions such as:

• what are the technologies employers are likely to adopt?
• What are the other megatrends that they will be facing?
• And what does that mean for specific jobs within their company, within their industry?
• What does that mean for skills and what does that mean for how they acquire and develop talent?

Key Findings:

• Technology adoption will remain a key driver of business transformation in the next five years. Organisations identify increased adoption of new and frontier technologies and broadening digital access as the trends most likely to drive transformation in their organisation.
• Within technology adoption, big data, cloud computing and AI feature highly on likelihood of adoption. More than 75% of companies are looking to adopt these technologies in the next five years.
  • Digital platforms and apps are the technologies most likely to be adopted by the organizations surveyed, with 86% of companies expecting to incorporate them into their operations in the next five years.
  • E-commerce and digital trade are expected to be adopted by 75% of businesses.
  • The second-ranked technology encompasses education and workforce technologies, with 81% of companies looking to adopt these technologies by 2027.
• The impact of most technologies on jobs is expected to be a net positive over the next five years. Big data analytics, climate change and environmental management technologies, and encryption and cybersecurity are expected to be the biggest drivers of job growth.
• Employers anticipate a structural labour market churn of 23% of jobs in the next five years. This is due to a mixture of emerging jobs and declining jobs, with a net decrease of 14 million jobs, or 2% of current employment.
• 42% of business tasks will be automated by 2027. Task automation in 2027 is expected to vary from 35% of reasoning and decision-making to 65% of information and data processing.
• Artificial intelligence, a key driver of potential algorithmic displacement, is expected to be adopted by nearly 75% of surveyed companies and is expected to lead to high churn – with 50% of organizations expecting it to create job growth and 25% expecting it to create job losses.
• The majority of the fastest growing roles are technology-related roles. AI and Machine Learning Specialists top the list of fast-growing jobs, followed by Sustainability Specialists, Business Intelligence Analysts and Information Security Analysts. Renewable Energy Engineers, and Solar Energy Installation and System Engineers are relatively fast-growing roles, as economies shift towards renewable energy.
• The majority of fastest declining roles are clerical or secretarial roles, with Bank Tellers and Related Clerks, Postal Service Clerks, Cashiers and Ticket Clerks, and Data Entry Clerks expected to decline fastest.
• Large-scale job growth is expected in education, agriculture and digital commerce and trade. Jobs in the Education industry are expected to grow by about 10%, leading to 3 million additional jobs for Vocational Education Teachers and University and Higher education Teachers.
• The largest losses are expected in administrative roles and in traditional security, factory and commerce roles.
• Analytical thinking and creative thinking remain the most important skills for workers in 2023. Analytical thinking is considered a core skill by more companies than any other skill and constitutes, on average, 9% of the core skills reported by companies.
• Employers estimate that 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted in the next five years. Cognitive skills are reported to be growing in importance most quickly, reflecting the increasing importance of complex problem-solving in the workplace.
• Six in 10 workers will require training before 2027, but only half of workers are seen to have access to adequate training opportunities today. The highest priority for skills training from 2023-2027 is analytical thinking, which is set to account for 10% of training initiatives, on average.
• 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.
• Forty-five percent of businesses see funding for skills training as an effective intervention available to governments seeking to connect talent to employment.

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