Indications have emerged that in five years time, precisely by 2027, the revolution coming from Artificial Intelligence (AI), among other emerging technologies, will create 69 million new jobs, while 83 million will be eliminated.

That implies a contraction of 14 million jobs globally in the next five years.

This formed part of the findings of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) The Future of Jobs Report 2023, which explores how jobs and skills will evolve over the next five years.

In the 296-page report, where 803 companies were surveyed, employers anticipated almost a quarter of jobs (23 per cent) to change in the next five years through growth of 10.2 per cent and a decline of 12.3 per cent.

The WEF report said macro trends, such as the green transition; environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards; localisation of supply chains; and tech advancements − are the leading drivers of job growth.

Aside, it said economic challenges, including high inflation, slower economic growth, supply shortages and inflation, pose the greatest threat.

They observed that the fastest-growing jobs are forecast to be AI; machine learning specialists, sustainability specialists, business intelligence analysts and information security specialists. The largest absolute growth is expected in education, agriculture and digital commerce.

The Managing Director of the WEF, Saadia Zahidi, said: “For people around the world, the past three years have been filled with upheaval and uncertainty for their lives and livelihoods, with COVID-19, geopolitical and economic shifts; and the rapid advancement of AI and other technologies are now risks adding more uncertainty.

“The good news is that there is a clear way forward to ensure resilience. Governments and businesses must invest in supporting the shift to the jobs of the future through the education, reskilling and social support structures that can ensure individuals are at the heart of the future of work.”

The Future of Jobs Report 2023 note that the fastest-growing roles are being driven by big data and AI, which are expected to create the highest number of future jobs, with 75 per cent of survey respondents expecting job growth in this area.

It said the employment of data analysts and scientists, big data specialists, AI machine learning specialists and cybersecurity professionals is expected to grow on average by 30 per cent by 2027.

“AI, a key driver of potential algorithmic displacement, is expected to be adopted by nearly 75 per cent of surveyed companies and is expected to lead to high churn – with 50 per cent of organisations expecting it to create job growth and 25 per cent expecting it to create job losses,” it said.

According to the report, training workers to utilise AI and big data will be prioritised by 42 per cent of surveyed companies in the next five years, ranking behind analytical thinking (48 per cent) and creative thinking (43 per cent) in importance.

WEF, in the survey gathered that companies report that skills gaps and an inability to attract talent are the key barriers to transformation, showing a clear need for training and reskilling across industries.

Specifically, six in 10 workers will require training before 2027, but only half of employees are seen to have access to adequate training opportunities today. At the same time, the report estimates that, on average, 44 per cent of an individual worker’s skills will need to be updated.

“Strong cognitive skills are increasingly valued by employers, reflecting the growing importance of complex problem-solving in the workplace. The most important skills for workers in 2023 are seen to be analytical thinking and creative thinking, and this is expected to remain so in the next five years,” it stated.

Overall, this report estimated a mean structural labour-market churn of 23 per cent for surveyed companies across sectors and countries over the next five years, indicating that total expected job movement, including both new roles being created and existing ones being destroyed, represents 23 per cent of the current workforce.

WEF said this finding helps to illustrate situations whereby relatively modest changes in net job numbers across a country or industry can partly mask major underlying reconfigurations within a churning labour market.

According to WEF, many of the roles, which are forecast to be growing and declining fastest, relative to their current proportion in the labour force, are consistent with the findings published in previous Future of Jobs reports in 2016, 2018 and 2020, signalling a structural reconfiguration of labour-markets with its roots in technological adoption and automation.