About the paper
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 analyses how technological change, geo-economic fragmentation, economic uncertainty, demographic shifts and the green transition are expected to reshape jobs, skills and workforce strategies by 2030.
It is primarily an original employer survey, supplemented by data partnerships with ADP, Coursera, Indeed and LinkedIn; the survey covers more than 1,000 employers representing over 14 million workers across 22 industry clusters and 55 economies.
The methodology is employer-perspective forecasting rather than labour-market measurement alone: the survey was conducted in late 2024 and asks organisations to estimate expected changes over the 2025–2030 period. The report is global in scope, but it explicitly focuses on larger companies and does not fully cover small enterprises or the informal sector.
Length: 290 pages
More information / download:
https://www.weforum.org/publications/the-future-of-jobs-report-2025/
Core Insights
1. What are the main forces expected to transform global labour markets by 2030?
The report identifies five broad forces: technological change, geo-economic fragmentation, economic uncertainty, demographic shifts and the green transition. These are presented not as separate trends, but as overlapping pressures that will reshape business models, employment and skill needs simultaneously.
The most prominent single trend is broadening digital access, which 60% of employers expect to transform their business by 2030. Within technology, AI and information-processing technologies stand out even more strongly: 86% of employers expect them to transform their business, followed by robotics and automation at 58%, and energy generation, storage and distribution at 41%.
Economic pressure remains highly important. Rising cost of living is the second-most transformative overall trend, cited by 50% of employers, while slower economic growth is cited by 42%. The green transition is also central: 47% expect climate-change mitigation to transform their business, and 41% expect climate adaptation to do so. Demographic change adds a further layer, with ageing populations affecting mainly higher-income economies and growing working-age populations affecting many lower-income economies.
The report’s perspective is clearly employer-led: it is concerned with how organisations expect these forces to affect business transformation, jobs, skills and workforce planning. That gives the report practical value, but it also means its findings reflect employers’ expectations rather than a neutral prediction of what will definitely happen.
2. What does the report predict about job creation, job displacement and the changing composition of work?
The report predicts substantial labour-market churn. Based on employer expectations, structural labour-market transformation between 2025 and 2030 is expected to affect the equivalent of 22% of today’s jobs. That consists of 170 million jobs created, equal to 14% of current employment, and 92 million jobs displaced, equal to 8%, producing a net increase of 78 million jobs, or 7%.
This is an important nuance: the report does not present the future of work as simple mass unemployment caused by technology. Its argument is that disruption will be large, uneven and reconfigurational. Some roles will grow quickly, some will decline sharply, and many workers will need to shift skills, roles or sectors.
Technology is described as especially double-edged. Broadening digital access and AI are expected to create jobs and displace jobs at the same time. Robotics and autonomous systems are more clearly associated with net job displacement. The report’s underlying message is therefore not “technology destroys work” or “technology creates work”, but that technology changes the distribution of work and the skill profile required to remain employable.
3. Which jobs are expected to grow or decline most, and why?
The fastest-growing roles in percentage terms are mainly technology-related. These include Big Data Specialists, FinTech Engineers, AI and Machine Learning Specialists, Software and Applications Developers, Data Warehousing Specialists, Information Security Analysts and related roles. Green-transition roles also feature strongly, including Autonomous and Electric Vehicle Specialists, Environmental Engineers and Renewable Energy Engineers.
However, the largest growth in absolute numbers is expected in frontline and foundational roles, not only in high-tech occupations. The report highlights Farm-workers, Delivery Drivers, Construction Workers, Salespersons and Food Processing Workers, alongside care and education roles such as Nursing Professionals, Social Work and Counselling Professionals, Personal Care Aides, and Tertiary and Secondary Education Teachers.
The largest declines are expected in clerical and secretarial work. Cashiers and Ticket Clerks, Administrative Assistants and Executive Secretaries, Postal Service Clerks, Bank Tellers and Data Entry Clerks are among the roles expected to decline most. This reflects the combined impact of digitalisation, AI, automation and changing business processes.
A key implication is that “future jobs” should not be understood only as AI engineers and data scientists. The report points to a more mixed labour-market future: high-growth technology roles, green-transition roles, care and education roles, and continued demand for many frontline jobs.
4. How are skills expected to change, and what does this imply for workers and employers?
The report estimates that 39% of workers’ existing skill sets will be transformed or become outdated over the 2025–2030 period. This is lower than the 44% estimate in the 2023 report and much lower than the 57% estimate in 2020, but it still represents a major level of disruption.
Analytical thinking remains the most sought-after core skill, with seven in 10 companies considering it essential in 2025. It is followed by resilience, flexibility and agility, and leadership and social influence. This matters because the report does not frame the future skills agenda as purely technical. Human, cognitive and adaptive capabilities remain central.
The fastest-growing skills are AI and big data, networks and cybersecurity, and technological literacy. These are followed by creative thinking, resilience, flexibility and agility, curiosity and lifelong learning, leadership and social influence, talent management, analytical thinking and environmental stewardship. Manual dexterity, endurance and precision are expected to see a notable net decline in demand.
The report’s underlying assumption is that employability will increasingly depend on combining technical fluency with adaptability and judgement. This is especially important because the skills that differentiate growing from declining roles include resilience, flexibility and agility; resource management and operations; quality control; programming; and technological literacy.
5. What workforce strategies do employers expect to use in response to these shifts?
Upskilling is the dominant response. The report says 85% of employers plan to prioritise upskilling their workforce. In addition, 70% expect to hire staff with new skills, around half plan to transition staff from declining to growing roles, and 40% expect to reduce staff as some skills become less relevant.
The scale of the training challenge is large. If the global workforce were 100 people, the report estimates that 59 would need training by 2030. Of these, 29 could be upskilled in their current roles, 19 could be upskilled and redeployed elsewhere in the organisation, and 11 would be unlikely to receive the reskilling or upskilling they need.
Employers also identify skill gaps as the biggest barrier to business transformation, cited by 63% of respondents. This makes skills not just an HR issue, but a strategic bottleneck. The report also highlights employee health and well-being as a top strategy for improving talent availability, cited by 64% of employers, while reskilling, upskilling and better progression are also seen as important.
Finally, AI-specific workforce strategies are central. Half of employers plan to reorient their business in response to AI, two-thirds plan to hire talent with AI-specific skills, and 40% anticipate reducing their workforce where AI can automate tasks. The report’s practical conclusion is that organisations face a dual challenge: they must adopt technology fast enough to remain competitive, while also redesigning jobs, training systems and talent pipelines fast enough to avoid widening skill gaps.