ENFUTURE OF WORK
Artificial intelligence, automation, demographic shifts, new ways of organizing and other forces are transforming tasks, skills and opportunities. Understanding that change requires looking beyond headlines about professions that are “disappearing” to examine which tasks are changing, which capabilities continue to travel with people and where new value is created.
This page synthesizes external research and explains how we interpret it at YoFWD. It is not an individual employment prediction.
An ILO study estimates that one in four workers worldwide is in an occupation with some degree of exposure to generative AI. The ILO notes that, because human input remains necessary, job transformation is more likely than complete replacement.
ILO · Generative AI and jobs: a 2025 update · 20 May 2025The OECD recommends skills-first approaches, recognition of capabilities, flexible learning pathways and career guidance to support mobility and adaptation.
OECD · Skills Outlook 2025In the Future of Jobs Report 2025 global survey, participating employers expect 39% of workers’ core skills to change by 2030. This is an expectation among surveyed employers, not a certain prediction for every person or country.
Survey of more than 1,000 employers representing over 14 million workers across 55 economies.
World Economic Forum · Future of Jobs Report 2025 · employer surveyIndicators can support better questions, but they do not provide an individual answer on their own.
The ILO warns that these indicators should not be read alone as predictions of job losses or labour-market outcomes.
The same title can conceal very different task mixes.
Technology is adopted differently across sectors, firms and countries.
Change can remove, transform and create work; its direction and pace remain uncertain.
The brief explicitly warns that exposure alone should not be interpreted as a prediction of job losses or labour-market outcomes.
Jobs are bundles of tasks. Some may be automated, others augmented by technology, and some may become more valuable as surrounding work changes. The same profession can evolve differently across sectors and organizations. Task-level analysis helps reveal transferable capabilities without assigning a fixed destiny to a person or profession.
A category for examining tasks technology might perform partly or fully in certain contexts.
Work where a tool may extend speed, reach or quality with human involvement.
Tasks whose relevance may grow because they provide complementary judgment, context or coordination.
Work that appears or is redefined as products, processes and needs change.
A skills-first approach considers what someone can demonstrate and perform alongside formal credentials. It makes prior learning and transferable capabilities visible, reduces friction through modular learning and supports navigation without stereotyping or prescribing.
Identify capabilities built across roles, projects and contexts.
Show results, practice and examples that make a capability understandable.
Prioritize learning connected to a specific opportunity or barrier.
Understand what is missing and why before investing time and money.
Credentials remain important, and regulated professions continue to require the relevant licenses and authorization.
These are areas to examine, not a list of capabilities guaranteed to remain valuable in the future.
Technological change interacts with other trends. The World Economic Forum studies several of them through an employer-survey lens; that perspective is useful but does not represent every person, sector or country on its own.
They can support workforce transitions, reskilling and outplacement when roles change or end.
They can consider how to support an income shock before a person has built a new income path.
Learning can connect with real gaps, evidence and market demand.
YoFWD is not affiliated with these institutions; the sources are included so the evidence can be traced.