The transformation of the jobs and skills landscape anticipated by this year’s Future of Jobs Survey respondents will have significant impacts on businesses, industries, governments and workers worldwide. It is crucial to develop nuanced forecasts, identify appropriate workforce and talent strategies, and make informed decisions on managing disruptions to jobs and skills for employers and workers alike.

This edition of the Future of Jobs Report presents a mixed picture with regard to the 2025-2030 outlook for the global labour market. On the one hand, amid newly emerging drivers such as increasing geoeconomic fragmentation, rising cost of living and the widespread adoption of AI tools in the workforce, global macrotrends create an ever- more complex environment for policy-makers, employers and workers to navigate, and uncertainty remains high. On the other hand, the report finds a strongly net-positive global employment outlook, with a continuing decrease in the rate of skills obsolescence, as reskilling, upskilling and redeployment initiatives implemented in recent years begin to register in the data and materialize their global workforce impact.

Employers across all industries and geographies demonstrate greater awareness and willingness than in previous editions of the report to proactively engage in addressing workforce and talent challenges, and to do so by pragmatically leveraging innovative approaches such as skills- based hiring policies and a more strategic focus on diversity, equity and inclusion.

However, skills gaps remain the predominant barrier to transformation across most industries and economies, and this year’s edition of the Future of Jobs Report captures some early signals of likely future priority areas for constructive multistakeholder engagement, including a need for proactive and dynamic job transitions across a wider and growing range of job roles and questions concerning the appropriate future balance between deeper automation and broader augmentation.

This last point reflects a core tenet of the Future of Jobs Report since its inception: that the future of work can be shaped for better outcomes and that it is the policy, business and investment decisions made by leaders today that will determine these outcomes and the future space for action. The World Economic Forum is actively supporting the building of a future-ready, inclusive workforce through its two human capital flagship initiatives: The Reskilling Revolution and The Jobs Initiative. We hope that this report will contribute to an ambitious multistakeholder agenda to better prepare workers, businesses, governments, educators and civil society, empowering them to build a better future of jobs for all.