The landscape of work is continuing to evolve at a rapid pace, with transformational breakthroughs, particularly in generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) reshaping industries and tasks across all sectors. These technological advances, however, are converging with a broader array of challenges, including economic volatility, geoeconomic realignments, environmental challenges and evolving societal expectations.
The Word Economic Forum’s fifth edition of the Future of Jobs Report brings together the perspective of over 1,000 leading global employers, collectively representing more than 14 million workers across 22 industry clusters and 55 economies from around the world, to examine how these macrotrends impact jobs and skills, and the workforce transformation strategies employers plan to embark on in response, across the 2025 to 2030 timeframe.
This first article in a series of three, will focus on emerging job trends and the impact of Artificial intelligence (AI) and how the EIT Deep Tech Talent Initiative, as one of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology’s (EIT) flagship programmes, addresses the talent gap by training deep tech talents across Europe.
The macro trends reshaping the job market
The Future of Jobs Reports’ survey highlights how macrotrends and technology will influence industry transformation and employment, the jobs and skills outlook over the next five years and the corresponding workforce transformation strategies companies plan to use to address these issues.
There are five macrotrends impacting the labour market:
Technological change
60% of employers expect broadening digital access to transform their business than any other trend, with similar proportions of employers across all regions selecting this trend. This growing digital access is a critical enabler for new technologies to transform labour markets.
AI and information processing technologies are expected to have the biggest impact, with 86% of Survey respondents expecting these technologies to transform their business by 2030.
Green Transition
The green transition remains a priority for many organisations globally, and 47% of surveyed employers anticipate the ramping up of efforts and investments to reduce carbon emissions as a key driver for organisational transformation. In the industrial sector 71% of employers in the Automotive and Aerospace industry and 69% of those in the Mining and Metals industry expecting carbon emissions reductions to transform their organisations.
Geoeconomic fragmentation and economic uncertainty
The Survey revealed that 34% of surveyed employers see heightened geopolitical tensions and conflicts as a key driver of organisational transformation. Meanwhile just over one-fifth of surveyed organisations identify increased restrictions on trade and investment (23%), as well as subsidies and industrial policies (21%), as factors reshaping their operations.
Most surveyed chief economists (54%) expect economic conditions to hold steady in the short term, and companies expect economic pressures to be among the most transformative drivers. The rising cost of living remains a top concern, with half of all surveyed employers expecting it to drive transformation, making it the second-most influential trend. Slower economic growth is also a major concern, with 42% of respondents expecting it to impact their operations.
‘The Future of European Competitiveness’ report by Professor Mario Draghi (the Draghi Report) lays out a clear diagnosis and provides concrete recommendations on how to address the skills gap in Europe by focusing on a broader range of skills than in the past. And together with the Competitive Compass for the EU (EU Compass) will guide the work over the next few years to reignite economic dynamism in Europe.
To assist in this effort, the EIT Deep Tech Talent Initiative offers stakeholders the opportunity to actively grow and become part of a dynamic ecosystem that advances deep tech education and training, while enhancing collaboration between academia and industry.
Its yearly Calls for Training Proposals focus on the training of talents to help mitigate the deep tech skills gap, foster creativity and innovation in curriculum design, and focus on empowering underrepresented groups.
Demographic Shift
The world is currently experiencing two fundamental demographic shifts: ageing populations in high-income economies and growing working-age populations in lower-income regions.
According to the Future of Jobs Report, 60% of employers facing the effects of aging population are increasingly prioritising transitioning current employees into growing roles as a key workforce strategy. Additionally, employers that identify growing working-age populations as a driver of transformation plan to prioritise reskilling and upskilling, with 92% indicating they will be focusing on these strategies by 2030.
Fastest-growing and fastest-declining jobs (2025-2030)
The Future of Jobs Report estimates that, by 2030, on current predictions, new job creation and job displacement due to macrotrends will represent a combined total of 22% of today’s total (formal) jobs. Specifically, macrotrend-driven creation of new jobs is estimated to amount to 170 million jobs, equivalent to 14% of today’s total employment. This growth is expected to be offset by the displacement of 92 million current jobs, or 8% of total employment, resulting in a net growth of 78 million jobs (7% of today’s total employment) by 2030.
The Future of Jobs data set only provides information on roles for which survey data availability meets a minimum coverage threshold, and corresponds to 1.18 billion workers in total, which is a subset of the ILO’s total employment data. The conclusions derived for this subset should not be treated as comprehensive, but rather as providing insights on selected segments of the global workforce.
Looking at the largest net growth and decline job roles in absolute numbers, the highest growth in absolute numbers of jobs is driven by roles that make up the core of many economies, e.g., farm workers, building construction workers, nursing professionals and care workers, and teachers!
The EIT Deep Tech Talent Initiative’s Train the Trainer Programme is specifically designed to enhance the capabilities of educators in the fields of deep tech (DT) and Innovation & Entrepreneurship (I&E), to address the significant gap in the integration of deep tech and I&E content in higher education, and aims to build a robust community of well-equipped educators who can foster a more dynamic and integrated approach to teaching deep tech and I&E.
AI’s role in job creation and workforce adaptation
Despite current uncertainty around the long-term impact of both AI in general and GenAI, the expected ongoing pace of disruption of skills has begun to stabilise, albeit at a high level. Overall, employers expect 39% of workers’ core skills to change by 2030.
Comparisons with previous editions of the Future of Jobs Survey reveal a notable shift in skill demands, with technology skills such as AI and big data, networks and cybersecurity, and environmental stewardship showing the largest net increase in the share of respondents identifying them as critical for the next five years. Currently 37% of all the available courses in the EIT Deep Tech Talent Initiative’s course catalogue are dedicated to Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning, including big data, and cater to a range of ages and ability from secondary school and undergraduates to professionals and life-long learners.
Conversely, skills like reading, writing, and mathematics; manual dexterity, endurance, and precision; and dependability and attention to detail have seen the largest decline in projected future demand.
However, the primary impact of technologies such as GenAI on skills may lie in their potential for ‘augmenting’ human skills through human-machine collaboration, rather than in outright replacement, particularly given the continued importance of human-centred skills
Some observers argue GenAI could empower less specialised employees to perform a greater range of ‘expert’ tasks, expanding the possible functions of roles such as accounting clerks, nurses, and teaching assistants, etc. Similarly, the technology could equip skilled professionals such as electricians, doctors or engineers with the world’s forefront knowledge, enabling them to solve complex problems more efficiently. Outcomes such as these, which create genuine shifts in the quantity or quality of output, are more likely to come about if technology development is focused on enhancing rather than substituting for human capabilities.
The EIT Deep Tech Talent Community facilitates the path to career growth and fosters expertise in deep tech for adult learners in companies and on the job market, but also pupils and students of higher education with an interest in deep tech. The Initiative has a catalogue of nearly 200 courses and training programmes across 15 relevant deep tech fields, and while almost 50% are academic (higher education) programmes, 25% are targeted at professional development, while 15% are aimed at life-long learners.
Preparing for the future of work
According to surveyed employers, the expectations around workforce training needs by 2030, for a representative sample of 100 workers, found:
- 41 will not require significant training
- 11 will require training, but it will not be accessible to them in the foreseeable future
- 29 will require training and be upskilled within their current roles
- 19 will require training and will be reskilled and redeployed within their organisation by 2030.
The anticipated need for training varies significantly across industries and geographies.
Industries, such as Telecommunications, and Information and Technology Services, which saw some of the largest uptake in reskilling and upskilling, still anticipate significant training needs, with 63% and 62% of their workforce, respectively, expected to need further training by 2030.
When it comes to funding of reskilling and upskilling initiatives, employers predominantly expect to fund their own training programmes. The second-most common funding mechanism is free of cost training, followed by government and public-private funding.
The most common outcomes employers expect from their investment in training are enhanced productivity (cited by 77% of respondents) and improved competitiveness (70%). Talent retention ranks as the third-most important expected outcome of training programmes, though it plays a more central role in sectors such as Automotive and Aerospace, Electronics, and Production of Consumer Goods, where over 72% of employers highlight this as a key priority.
With the EIT Deep Tech Talent Initiative an important step was taken to strengthen Europe’s position in the deep tech. Between 2026-2028, the Initiative, together with other European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) projects will add considerable value to the Union of Skills and the STEM Education Action Plan through its catalogue of training programmes, network of training providers, and funding opportunities for course creation.
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