In addition to technological changes (artificial intelligence), two demographic changes are increasingly affecting economies and labor markets: aging and shrinking working-age populations, especially in rich economies, and expanding working-age populations, especially in poor economies.
For more than a decade, the World Economic Forum has been examining the future of jobs and the world of employment. In the latest report issued by – Right in 2025 – he surveyed more than a thousand global employers from 22 different fields, all to understand what the job market will look like in 2030.
Let's get straight to the point. It probably won't surprise you to find that artificial intelligence is at the top of the list. But alongside it are other forces that are important to recognize and understand how they are also affecting the future of employment. These include, for example, the higher cost of living, dealing with climate change and protecting the environment, a focus on social issues, slowing economic growth, and an aging population.
The forum’s researchers took all these forces together, surveyed more than a thousand employers to understand how significant they were, and then weighed it all against current employment data. They concluded that by 2030, about 92 million jobs will disappear and be liquidated. On the bright side, 170 million new jobs will be created at the same time. That means a total of 78 million jobs will be added to the labor market.
In which areas will jobs disappear, and in which do we see new jobs appearing? The researchers asked employers about the jobs they believe will grow the most rapidly over the next five years. The results should make tech professionals very happy: the need for big data specialists is set to double. Right behind them in the fast-growing competition are fintech engineers, artificial intelligence specialists, and app and software developers.
In seventh and surprising place, you can find experts in autonomous and electric vehicles, for whom the demand will increase by about fifty percent. This is precisely where, in my opinion, we are dealing with an underestimation. When autonomous vehicles reach their peak – and it seems that they are very close to that – every large organization will have to examine how to integrate them into a large number of services. They will be involved in security, employee transportation, goods transportation, and so on and so forth. If this happens, then the number of autonomous vehicle experts will increase within a few years from a rounded zero in every company, to at least one.
And what jobs will disappear at the fastest rate? First of all, postal clerks. Immediately after them, bank clerks. Then also the clerks whose entire job is to enter information into a computer at the speed of a lazy person, and the ticket office clerks. In general, we can say that organizations will need fewer people in routine roles, of entering information or going over information, that are repeated over and over again.
Don’t have the skills to develop artificial intelligence? Too bad, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t find your place in the job market of the future. Yes, the fields of information and software are the ones that will grow the fastest, but in absolute numbers, there will be work for a lot more people in other fields. The number of farm workers and farmers, for example, is set to increase by 35 million by 2030. Why? Because as the general standard of living rises, people consume more food – and someone has to get all that food from the land. In addition, farmers have to adapt to climate change, and that requires more work in the field.
What else do people who consume more food and goods need? They need drivers to bring them all the food, gifts, and orders from Amazon, AliExpress, and Walmart. And so, the number of delivery drivers will also increase significantly. But sometimes consumers also go to malls, right? And so we can expect the number of salespeople in stores to increase as well. And when all these consumers get too fat and get old, they will go to get medical care. And accordingly, the nursing professions are also expected to expand and grow by 2030.
The impact of artificial intelligence
It's particularly interesting to see how researchers predict AI will affect jobs around the world. They believe AI will eliminate nearly nine million jobs by 2030, but will create about 11 million new ones. That is, overall, it will create more new jobs, but it will also severely disrupt existing ones.
Another type of artificial intelligence – “robots and autonomous systems” – will lead to an even bigger shake-up. Researchers predict that robots will enter the workforce and eliminate about eight million jobs, while creating only three million new ones. This means that robots will be responsible for the loss of 4.8 million existing jobs.
You can see these results in more detail in the graphs. Last year, about 47 percent of all jobs in the world were ones that humans did mostly on their own. Writing for a newspaper, for example, or selling tickets at a circus. In five years, the percentage of jobs of this type will decrease by 14 percent, and the percentage of jobs that machines can do themselves without human intervention will increase by about the same number.
The new skills
The key implication of these predictions is that workers will need to acquire new skills for the new job market in 2030.
What will be the most in-demand skills? The truth is, there’s not much difference here from previous World Economic Forum reports over the past five years. Workers in 2030 will need to demonstrate analytical thinking, resilience and mental flexibility, leadership ability, creative thinking, motivation and self-awareness, and of course – technological literacy. And what skill will the need for increase most dramatically? Of course, the ability to work with artificial intelligence and big data.
Along the way, we will also mention the most surprising skill: it is one that is not particularly needed today, but the demand for it is expected to increase significantly by 2030. The researchers define this skill as "environmental stewardship," and it is a derivative of the attempt to move to a greener world.
How many people will need to retrain to find a job in the 2030 market? I recall that the study projected that 90 million people would lose their jobs, and 170 million new jobs would open up. Both of these projections make it clear that a huge number of workers will need to be retrained. Indeed, the researchers predict that 59 percent—nearly two-thirds of all workers today—will need to be retrained. A full nineteen percent will also need to change jobs, while 29 percent will retrain and stay in their current job. Perhaps the saddest category is that of the additional 11 percent who need to acquire new skills—but are unlikely to be able, able to, or willing to do so.
And this, of course, brings us to the final point: what will companies and employers do?
Their answer can be divided into two types: those who will invest in people, and those who will invest in machines.
Of all employers surveyed, 85 percent clearly said they intend to invest in their human workforce and help them acquire new and more relevant skills. Seventy percent said they will also focus on finding new employees who can handle the new needs. These are the “investors in people.”
It’s easy to see what characterizes the second type of employer – “investors in machines.” Of all employers, seventy-three percent said they intend to accelerate the automation and mechanization of tasks and processes in the organization. Sixty-three percent announced their intention to supplement and augment the existing workforce with new technologies. And almost half of employers (forty-one percent) clearly said they would lay off employees whose skills are no longer relevant.
Summary
This, then, is the World Economic Forum’s forecast for 2030. Almost two-thirds of today’s workers will need to learn new skills. A fifth of all workers will need to change jobs, many of them with the active encouragement of employers who will fire those whose skills no longer match the current role. Artificial intelligence will help routine tasks gradually disappear, while other roles – mainly those requiring bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral degrees in engineering and science – will open up around the world. At the same time, we will also see an increase in the number of farmers, shop assistants, delivery people, and truck drivers to meet consumer demand for services, food, and toys in abundance.
Is the World Economic Forum right? Its predictions over the past decade about the skills needed have been pretty spot on. We'll have to see if it can be as accurate about the future as it is now.
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לThe World Economic Forum's Future of Employment Survey in Davos
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