About the paper
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023 analyses how macro-trends, technology adoption, skills disruption and workforce strategies are expected to reshape labour markets from 2023 to 2027.
It is a mixed-methods report built primarily on the fourth Future of Jobs Survey of 803 companies employing more than 11.3 million workers, across 27 industry clusters and 45 economies from all world regions, supplemented with data collaborations from Coursera, Indeed and LinkedIn.
Length: 296 pages
More information / download:
https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2023/
Core Insights
1. What is the central labour-market outlook presented in the report?
The report’s central argument is that the global labour market is entering a period of significant structural churn rather than simple expansion or contraction. Employers expect major reconfiguration of roles, driven by technology, the green transition, economic pressure, supply-chain shifts and changing worker expectations.
The headline estimate is that 23% of jobs will change structurally between 2023 and 2027. In the dataset covering 673 million jobs, employers expect 69 million jobs to be created and 83 million to be displaced, resulting in a net decrease of 14 million jobs, or about 2% of current employment.
This is not presented as a uniform jobs crisis. The report’s more nuanced claim is that losses and gains will be unevenly distributed. Some roles, especially clerical, administrative and record-keeping jobs, are expected to decline sharply, while roles linked to technology, sustainability, education, agriculture and digital commerce are expected to grow.
2. Which forces are expected to transform businesses and jobs most strongly?
The report identifies technology adoption as the most widely expected driver of business transformation. More than 85% of surveyed organisations expect increased adoption of new and frontier technologies and broader digital access to transform their organisations.
However, the report broadens the analysis beyond technology. It also highlights the green transition, ESG standards, climate adaptation, localisation of supply chains, slow economic growth, inflation, rising costs and geopolitical fragmentation.
The strongest expected net job-creation effects come from green-transition investment, broader ESG adoption and more localised supply chains. By contrast, the strongest expected net job-destruction effects come from slower economic growth, supply shortages, rising input costs and the rising cost of living.
So the report’s view is not “technology destroys jobs” or “technology creates jobs”. It argues that technology, climate, economics and geopolitics are interacting, producing both new demand and significant displacement.
3. Which jobs are expected to grow, and which are expected to decline?
The fastest-growing roles relative to their current size are mainly technology- and sustainability-related. AI and Machine Learning Specialists are at the top, followed by Sustainability Specialists, Business Intelligence Analysts, Information Security Analysts, Renewable Energy Engineers and related roles.
Large-scale job growth is also expected in education, agriculture and digitally enabled commerce. The report projects growth in roles such as Vocational Education Teachers, University and Higher Education Teachers, Agricultural Equipment Operators, E-commerce Specialists, Digital Transformation Specialists and Digital Marketing and Strategy Specialists.
The steepest declines are expected in clerical and administrative work. Bank Tellers, Postal Service Clerks, Cashiers and Ticket Clerks, Data Entry Clerks, Accounting and Payroll Clerks, and Administrative and Executive Secretaries are among the roles expected to decline most.
The report estimates that 26 million fewer jobs may exist by 2027 in record-keeping and administrative roles alone. This makes administrative work one of the clearest areas of projected displacement.
4. What does the report say about skills disruption and future skill needs?
The report estimates that 44% of workers’ skills will be disrupted over the next five years. This is lower than the 57% disruption forecast in the 2020 edition, but still signals substantial pressure on workers and employers.
Analytical thinking is identified as the most important core skill in 2023, followed by creative thinking. The report also places strong emphasis on resilience, flexibility, agility, motivation, self-awareness, curiosity, lifelong learning and technological literacy.
The fastest-rising skills include creative thinking, analytical thinking, technological literacy, curiosity and lifelong learning, resilience, systems thinking, AI and big data, talent management and customer-service orientation.
A key point is that companies’ training priorities do not simply mirror current skill importance. AI and big data rank only 15th as a current core skill, but third as a corporate training priority. This suggests that employers see AI capability as strategically urgent, even where it is not yet embedded across the workforce.
5. What workforce strategies do companies expect to use, and what are the implications?
The report finds that employers see skills gaps and difficulty attracting talent as the two biggest barriers to business transformation. Skills gaps in local labour markets are identified by 60% of surveyed companies, while 53% cite inability to attract talent.
The most common workforce strategies are investing in learning and training on the job, and accelerating automation. Around four in five companies expect to use each of these strategies.
The report estimates that six in 10 workers will need training before 2027, but only about half currently have access to adequate training opportunities. Companies expect much of this training to happen internally, through on-the-job training, coaching and internal training departments, rather than mainly through external providers.
The implication is that the future of work will depend heavily on whether organisations can move from abstract concern about skills to practical, scaled workforce development. The report’s underlying assumption is that labour-market disruption is not fully predetermined: policy choices, business investment and talent strategies will shape whether the transition becomes exclusionary or opportunity-generating.