An interesting report has been issued by the World Economic Forum. The report dated May 2023 highlights labor market and job outlook expectations from a strategic perspective covering the years 2023-2027. According to the World Economic Forum, the report is gleaned from a survey process which covers 803 companies which collectively employ 11.3 million workers across multiple industries and economies and is global in scope.
The report is very comprehensive in many aspects of labor market dynamics including wage growth, employment levels and challenges associated with real wage declines. My primary interest here is to highlight some of the themes specific to technology and artificial intelligence and their impact on jobs globally.
Having created a focus I will continue. Technology adoption will remain a key driver of business transformation over the next five years according to the report. Over 85% of organizations surveyed identify adoption of new and frontier technologies as the most likely trend to impact their organizations. Big data, cloud computing and AI are assumed by over 75% of the companies as technology that they will adopt.
The Good News: The impact of most technologies on jobs is expected to be a net positive over the next 5 years. Analytics, climate and environmental technologies, along with cyber security will drive the most job growth.
The Maybe Good News depending on who you are and what you do for a living: AI and other technologies are expected to result in significant labor market disruption resulting in job displacement offset by job growth elsewhere in a net positive.
As you can see, the maybe good news depends on what you do, what you can do and how quickly you might be able to change the nature of your role, job or career. Again, according to the report, six in ten workers will require specific training before 2027, with “analytical thinking” accounting for the largest single defined category, followed by “creative thinking”. (quotes are mine)
It will be interesting to see how the labor equation plays out as AI’s impact is more fully felt. I feel that a large challenge with some assumptions over the next 5 years is whether or not it is truly possible to imagine the “what might be” and also the possible speed of change. Maybe if we had more “analytical thinking” and “creative thinking” today, this would all be clearer.
