Future of work: The salary surge: putting a price on the global talent crunch

This paper estimates the wage increases that organizations in 20 major global economies may have to pay to attract and retain highly skilled labor resulting from the expected global talent shortage. It builds on data from our study, The Global Talent Crunch, which modeled the gap between future labor supply and demand to estimate the impending skilled talent shortage at three future milestones: 2020, 2025, and 2030. In The Salary Surge, we project the impact the talent shortage will have on wage bills by mapping Korn Ferry’s proprietary global pay data against the skilled labor shortage estimates across the same 20 economies at the same milestone dates. The study focuses on three knowledge-intensive sectors within each market that act as critical drivers of global economic growth – financial and business services; technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT); and manufacturing – and also examines the remainder of each economy outside of these core industries. The report focuses on highly skilled labor, which is where the most acute shortages are found, and uses educational attainment as a commonly accepted proxy for skills.