Following on from our article ‘The Future of Work: Emerging job trends and the impact of AI (2025-2030)’, this second article based on the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 focuses on the key skills employers will be looking for and how education needs to adapt to reflect the needs of the workforce. This article will be of particular interest for talents looking to keep their skills relevant, or training providers seeking inspiration on the new skills that will need training courses.
Businesses and workers alike must adapt to emerging technological trends and changes, and with 85% of employers prioritising workforce reskilling and 70% planning to hire staff with new skills, reskilling initiatives will be critical to maintaining employability and business competitiveness in the coming years.
Despite current uncertainty around the long-term impact of generative AI, the expected ongoing pace of disruption of skills has begun to stabilise, with 39% of employers expecting workers’ core skills to change by 2030, down from 44% in 2023. One element contributing to this finding may be a growing focus on continuous learning, upskilling and reskilling programmes, enabling companies to better anticipate and manage future skill requirements, which is reflected in 50% of the workforce having completing training as part of long-term learning strategies, and is consistent across almost all industries.
Core skills for 2025 and beyond
2025
As in the two previous editions of the Future of Jobs report, analytical thinking remains the top core skill for employers in 2025, with seven out of 10 companies considering it as essential. This is followed by ‘resilience, flexibility and agility’, along with ‘leadership and social influence’, underscoring the critical role of adaptability and collaboration alongside cognitive skills. Creative thinking and ‘motivation and self-awareness’ rank fourth and fifth, respectively. This combination of cognitive, self-efficacy and interpersonal skills within the top five emphasises the importance in having an agile, innovative and collaborative workforce, where both problem-solving abilities and personal resilience are critical for success.
While the core skill sets are relatively consistent across broader industries and geographical regions, there are notable distinctions within specific sectors and geographies. For example, the Telecommunications industry stands out for prioritising design and user experience, networks and cybersecurity, and programming skills, with twice the global average of respondents considering these as core skills in their organisations. Similarly, the Information and Technology Services sector places greater emphasis on programming skills.
Core skills on the rise 2025-2030
According to employer expectations for the evolution of skills in the next five years, technological skills are projected to grow in importance more rapidly than any other type of skills. Among these, ‘AI and big data’ top the list as the fastest-growing skills, followed closely by ‘networks and cybersecurity’ and ‘technological literacy’. Complementing these technological skills, ‘creative thinking’ and two socio-emotional attitudes, ‘resilience, flexibility, and agility’, along with ‘curiosity and lifelong learning’, are also seen as rising in importance.
At the other end of the spectrum, respondents identified ‘sensory-processing abilities’, ‘reading, writing and mathematics’, ‘dependability and attention to detail’, ‘quality control’, and ‘global citizenship’ as among the most stable skills. A small net decline is anticipated in ‘reading, writing, and mathematics’, however, ‘manual dexterity, endurance, and precision’ stands out with a notable anticipated net decline, with 24% of respondents foreseeing a decrease in its importance. The declining relevance of physical abilities has been a trend in previous Future of Jobs Reports, but this is the first time it has seen a net negative decline.
Core skills in 2030
Skills such as ‘AI and big data’, ‘analytical thinking’, ‘creative thinking’, ‘resilience, flexibility and agility’, and ‘technological literacy’ are not only considered critical now but are also projected to become even more important. Moreover, ‘leadership and social influence’, ‘curiosity and lifelong learning’, ‘systems thinking’, ‘talent management’, and ‘motivation and self-awareness’ solidify their importance, emphasising the continued relevance of human-centric skills amid rapid technological advances.
Meanwhile, ‘networks and cybersecurity’ and ‘environmental stewardship’ rank among the top 10 skills expected to increase significantly in use by 2030, yet they are not currently considered core skills for most organisations. These emerging skills represent areas where businesses may need to anticipate growing demands and develop capabilities before they become critical.
“Targeted skills development efforts are of great importance to support workers in transitioning to growing roles as well as to ensure employers can access a talent pool with the skills required for the future of work.”
In response to the rise of these emerging skills, the EIT Deep Tech Talent Initiative has assembled a catalogue of almost 200 courses and training programmes (as of April 2025), across 15 relevant deep tech fields, which offer a great opportunity for European professionals to improve their knowledge and expertise in their preferred areas of interest.
In terms of the core skills on the rise between 2025 and 2030, 37% of the courses within the EIT Deep Tech Talent Initiative catalogue are dedicated to Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning (including big data), and 21% are focused on networks and cybersecurity. Alongside the technical skills, Pledgers are cultivating courses that also improve the necessary soft skills needed to succeed in the future, such as, creative and analytical thinking, resilience and agility, and, more importantly, the mindset for lifelong learning.
Bridging the skills gap
63% of surveyed employers cite ‘skill gaps’ in the labour market as the primary barrier to business transformation. While 46% of respondents identify ‘organisational culture and resistance to change’ as a key obstacle, which highlights the anticipated challenge of aligning internal processes, organisational structures, hierarchies and mindsets in responding to the trends and disruptions companies expect to face. With ‘regulatory concerns’, the ‘inability to attract talent’, and ‘inadequate data and technical infrastructure’ ranking third, fourth, and fifth obstacles, respectively.
The report highlights that only 29% of businesses expect talent availability to improve over the 2025-2030 period, a drop from 39% in 2023. By contrast, 42% of employers expect talent availability to decline over this period, resulting in a net negative talent availability outlook (-13% net expectation of improvement) and highlighting increasing concern among businesses regarding their ability to find the right future talent.
Employers remain more broadly optimistic about the outlook for talent development with seven in 10 respondents expect improvements in talent development within their organisation by 2030. However, only 44% of surveyed organisations expect improvements in their ability to retain talent, a decline of 9% from 2023.
Current skills gap strategies
- Upskilling is the most common workforce strategy, across all geographies and economies, with 85% of surveyed employers anticipating adopting this approach.
- Process and task automation is the second most common workforce strategy, with 73% of employers planning to accelerate their use of this approach.
- Workforce adjustments – 70% of organisations surveyed plan to hire new staff with emerging in-demand skills, 51% intend to transition staff from declining to growing roles internally, while 41% foresee staff reductions due to skills obsolescence.
- 63% of employers intend to complement and augment their workforce with new technologies.
Current strategies to improve talent availability
- Supporting employee health and well-being has newly emerged as a top priority to increase talent availability over the 2025-2030 period, with 64% of employers now seeing promise in this approach.
- Providing effective reskilling and upskilling opportunities, highlighted by 63% of organisations, this is particularly evident in the Government and Public sector, where four out of five respondents expect such measures to grow their talent base.
- Improving talent progression and promotion remains a key focus for 62% of surveyed organisations.
- Higher wages are identified as a priority by 50% of survey respondents.
- Tapping into diverse talent pools continues to increase in importance, with 47% of surveyed employers emphasising the potential of this strategy.
The EIT Deep Tech Talent Initiative’s mission is to skill, reskill, and upskill the European workforce to help bridge the talent gap and build a strong pool of deep tech talent through its catalogue of courses and training programmes.
Additionally, the Tech Radar, built in collaboration with Pledgers of the Initiative, is a dynamic digital tool built around 35 technologies relevant to deep tech, that visualises emerging technologies and the organisations active in them, and is particularly useful for training providers looking to identify future skills gaps for course development.
Approaches to skills assessment
Removing academic degree requirements and conducting skill-based hiring is an increasingly recognised approach to expanding talent availability. Work experience continues to be the most common assessment mechanism in hiring processes, with 81% of businesses expecting to continue to rely on it over the 2025-2030 period, underlining the value employers place on practical, on-the-job learning and achievements. Only 4% of companies report that they do not assess the skills of prospective employees, highlighting that skills evaluation is almost universal across industries.
The second most common method of evaluation is skills assessments, expected to be utilised by 48% of employers, highlighting a growing emphasis on directly testing candidates’ competencies rather than relying solely on their resumes. Additionally, psychometric tests are planned to be used by 34% of businesses, reflecting an increased focus on evaluating candidates’ behavioural traits, cognitive abilities and cultural fit.
University degree requirements are in third place of employers’ approaches to skills assessment. However, only 43% of respondents expect to continue to use degrees as a requirement by 2030, highlighting that employers are increasingly focusing on work experience and psychometric testing over traditional credentials like university degrees. This shift signals a growing recognition that practical skills and cognitive abilities may be more indicative of future job performance than formal educational qualifications, in addition to expanding the talent pool. However, O*NET’s database of job experience requirements reveals that 14 of the 15 fastest-growing jobs over 2025 to 2030 primarily require a university degree, while seven of the 15 largest-growing roles demand an advanced degree, indicating that this reliance on traditional credentials in rapidly expanding roles could exacerbate talent shortages.
Adopting a skills-first approach can broaden talent pools and strengthen talent pipelines for these future roles. Moreover, the diverse requirements of the largest-growing jobs highlight the critical role of occupations that are often accessible through vocational training, apprenticeships, on-the-job experience, or associate degrees. But, the expected use of apprenticeships, short courses and online certificates in skills assessment has seen a slight decline since 2023, with only 17% of employers anticipating to prioritise apprenticeships, and 14% planning to consider online certificates in their hiring decisions.
EIT Deep Tech Talent Initiative Pledger, Generation, focuses on a skills-based hiring model that challenges conventional recruitment methods, and all their training programmes are based on jobs that are in high demand that companies struggle to hire for. Generation’s approach to non-traditional talent acquisition is not just about diversity and inclusion, it’s about solving real business problems. By focusing on skills, competencies, and the job-specific training that their graduates received, Generation helps companies fill roles with candidates who are ready to contribute from day one.
Summary
The report highlights that employers across all industries and geographies demonstrate greater awareness and willingness to proactively engage in addressing workforce and talent challenges, and to do so by pragmatically leveraging innovative approaches such as skills-based hiring policies and a more strategic focus on diversity, equity and inclusion.
However, skills gaps remain the predominant barrier to transformation across most industries and economies, and this report captures some early signals of likely future priority areas for constructive multistakeholder engagement, including a need for proactive and dynamic job transitions across a wider and growing range of job roles and questions concerning the appropriate future balance between deeper automation and broader augmentation.
The EIT Deep Tech Talent Initiative is proactively responding to the trends and challenges exposed in this report through continually adding quality checked courses to its course catalogue to help build a strong pool of deep tech talent to solidify Europe’s role as a leader in deep tech and securing its future in an increasingly competitive technology-driven world.
Additionally, the annual Calls for Training Proposals, helps consortiums develop courses in areas identified as having future skills gaps.
One of the core values of the EIT Deep Tech Talent Initiative is a focus on diversity, equality, and inclusion, with three main groups of learners prioritised for deep tech skills training:
- Pupils, especially young women, in secondary education with an interest in deep tech;
- Students of Higher Education with a need for more specialised training in deep tech; and
- Adult Learners in companies and on the job market who need additional skills in deep tech.
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