Jobs of tomorrow: Mapping opportunity in the new economy

The Fourth Industrial Revolution is creating demand for millions of new jobs, with vast new opportunities for fulfilling people’s potential and aspirations. However, in order to turn these opportunities into reality, new sources of data and innovative approaches to understand emerging jobs and skills, as well as to empower effective and coordinated large-scale action are urgently needed across the globe. This report takes an in-depth look into the ‘black box’ of new job creation, reviewing the shifting focus of employment to emerging professions of the future, the reasons behind it and what skills will be required by these professions. The analysis presented in this report is based on innovative metrics authored in partnership between the World Economic Forum’s New Metrics CoLab in its Platform for the New Economy and Society, and data scientists at three partner companies: Burning Glass Technologies, Coursera and LinkedIn. Through these collaborations, the report provides insights into emerging opportunities for employment across the global economy as well as unique detail regarding the skill sets needed to leverage those opportunities. The report is presented in two parts with ‘Part 1: Opportunity in the emerging labour market’ including: Emerging professions and job churn, Mapping emerging occupations, Quantifying the jobs of tomorrow, Identifying rising demand for skill sets, and Mapping distinctive learning trajectories and skills capabilities. ‘Part 2: Profession of the future in focus’ includes: Care economy, Data and [artificial intelligence] AI, Engineering and cloud computing, Green economy, People and culture, and Product development. Key findings include: Demand for both ‘digital’ and ‘human’ factors is driving growth in the professions of the future; There are seven emerging professional clusters and 96 jobs of tomorrow within them that vary in their individual rate of growth and in the scale of job opportunities they offer in the aggregate; Growth in these clusters and jobs is largest among care roles and smallest among green professions; The highest-growth jobs of tomorrow span all seven profession clusters; The highest-demand skills required in these emerging professional clusters span both technical and cross-functional skills.