World Economic Forum Maps the Future of Work: Macrotrends and Opportunities at the Job Market

By Emil Bjerg, journalist and editor

The World Economic Forum’s recent Future of Jobs Report 2025 offers a comprehensive look at the rapidly evolving global labor market, forecasting significant shifts in employment trends over the next five years. Here, we cover the shifts, opportunities and in demand skills in the years ahead. 

The Future of Work is a bi-annual report from the World Economic Forum (WEF).  Their latest report covers changes in the job market from 2025 to 2030, based on surveys of over 1,000 employers representing more than 14 million workers across 22 industry clusters.

The report projects a net increase of 78 million jobs globally by 2030, resulting from the creation of 170 million new jobs and the displacement of 92 million existing roles.

Five Macrotrends Drive Changes on the Job Market

This transformation is driven by five major macro trends, ranked by significance in the below order:

1. Technological change

Employers expect technological change to be the most significant trend. According to WEF’s survey “More employers – 60% – expect broadening digital access to transform their business than any other trend”. Especially AI and automation drive this macrotrend: 86% of respondents expect AI and information processing technologies to have the biggest impact on the future of jobs, while the number is 58% for robots and autonomous systems.

2. Economic uncertainty

WEF writes that “As of early 2025, the global economic outlook appears to be shaped by a combination of cautious optimism and persistent uncertainties”. For that reason, economic uncertainty is a decisive macro trend. While inflation has gone down and the economy has proven resilient in 2024, half of employers expect the rising cost of living to drive organizational changes and 42% anticipate slower economic growth to impact their operations. These economic dynamics are creating a cautious employment landscape.

3. Geoeconomic fragmentation

Global tensions intensifies global trade fragmentation, with governments imposing trade restrictions and increasing subsidies. The WTO reports that trade restrictions doubled between 2020 and 2024, potentially risking global economic growth. Industries highly dependent on global supply chains, such as the car- and mining sectors, expect significant transformation due to these trends, while more domestic-focused sectors anticipate less impact.

4. Green transition

The green transition continues to be a priority for many organizations globally, with nearly half of the surveyed employers anticipating that efforts to reduce carbon emissions will drive significant organizational transformation. This trend is particularly pronounced in carbon-intensive industries such as automotive, aerospace, and mining, where decarbonization efforts will require substantial workforce upskilling and reskilling. Despite a 12% increase in workers acquiring green skills between 2022 and 2023, demand continues to outpace supply, WEF finds. 

5. Demographic shifts

WEF reports that the world is experiencing two major demographic shifts at once: an aging population in higher-income economies and growing working-age populations in lower-income economies. These shifts are significantly impacting global labor supply, with 40% of employers worldwide being transformed by aging populations and 25% by growing working-age populations.

With these macrotrends defined, let’s have a look at the WEF’s projection for job growth and decline.

Growth and Decline in Jobs by 2030

Based on insights from employers on which job roles are expected to grow, decline or remain stable, the report estimates that by 2030, there will be 7% more formal jobs globally.  While 92 million jobs are projected to be displaced, 170 million jobs are projected to be created. In other words, the thousand employers surveyed generally do not share recent concerns about automation and AI resulting in mass job losses.

So which sectors will drive the most job growth?

Growing and Declining Roles

Perhaps unsurprisingly, in the coming five years, we can expect a substantial growth in a variety of technical roles. With a projected growth of more than 110%, the role with the highest projected growth is big data specialist. Following that are fintech engineers and AI and machine learning specialists. See the full list below.

The report also highlights significant job growth in frontline roles such as farmworkers, delivery drivers, and construction workers, while also mentioning growth in care jobs like nursing professionals and education roles like secondary school teachers.  

While technical roles are in demand, more manual jobs are seeing decline. Postal service clerks, bank tellers and data entry clerks are all at a projected decline of more than 20%.

Skills Disruption and Future In Demand Skills

The beginning of the 2020’s has been uncertain times. The decade kicked off with COVID-19, followed by inflation, the war in Ukraine and a steep increase in the use of AI. All affecting the perception of which skills are going to be in demand in the future. After some uncertain years, the WEF reports that the skills disruption is coming back to a more stable level at 39%.

The number refers to that among the surveyed employers expect 39% of workers’ core skills to change by 2030.

The WEF reports that skill gaps are considered the biggest barrier to business transformation, with 63% of employers identifying them as a major barrier over the 2025- 2030 period.

So what skills are in demand? Unsurprisingly, tech- and AI-related skills are projected to be in demand, taking the top three of the list. More creative and abstract are also projected to increase in demand with creative thinking, resilience, flexibility and agility and finally curiosity and lifelong learning taking the fourth, fifth and sixth place respectively.

For more employer insights and regional perspectives, WEF’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 is freely accessible here.