An illustration of bank tellers/ HANDOUTAre you a bank teller or would you like to venture into the field? The Future of Jobs Report 2025, advises against this.
According to the report by the World Economic Forum released on January 7, 2025, job opportunities such as bank tellers and related clerks may soon be a thing of the past.
WEF Managing Director Saadia Zahidi stated that the report gathered insights from employers on the state of job roles within their organisations over the next five years.
Other fast declining jobs include transportation attendants and conductors, graphic designers, legal officials and legal secretaries.
Telemarketers, door-door sales workers, news and street vendors and related workers are also set to fast decrease between 2025 and 2030.
Administrative assistants and executive secretaries, claims adjusters, examiners and investigators, and printing and related trade workers are also fast declining.
Clerical jobs appeared most on the list, with postal service clerks topping the list.
Others are data entry clerks, cashiers and ticket clerks, accounting, bookkeeping and payroll clerks, and material-recording and stock-keeping clerks.
Zahidi said the dataset was derived from an extensive survey of global employers.
“This year’s edition captures the perspectives of over 1,000 employers – representing more than 14 million workers across 22 industry clusters and 55 economies – providing unparalleled insights into the emerging jobs landscape for the 2025-2030 period,” she said.
The MD stated that technological change, geoeconomic fragmentation, economic uncertainty, demographic shifts and the green transition – individually and in combination – are among the major drivers expected to shape and transform the global labour market by 2030.
She noted that broadening digital access, AI and information processing technologies, and robots and autonomous systems are the primary drivers for the decline in the aforementioned roles.
“Aging and declining working-age populations and slower economic growth also contribute to the decline in clerical roles,” Zahidi added.
While conducting the survey, WEF found that two demographic shifts are increasingly seen to be transforming global economies and labour markets.
These are the aging and declining working-age populations, predominantly in higher-income economies, and expanding working-age populations, predominantly in lower-income economies.
“These trends drive an increase in demand for skills in talent management, teaching and mentoring, and motivation and self-awareness,” Zahidi said.
She added that aging populations drive growth in healthcare jobs such as nursing professionals, while growing working-age populations fuel growth in education-related professions, such as higher education teachers.
Zahidi said the frontline job roles are predicted to see the largest growth in absolute terms of volume.
These include farm workers, delivery drivers, construction workers, salespersons and food processing workers.
She added that care economy jobs, such as nursing professionals, social work and counselling professionals and personal care aides are also expected to grow significantly over the next five years, alongside education roles such as tertiary and secondary education teachers.
Zahidi stated that on average, workers can expect that two-fifths (39 per cent) of their existing skill sets will be transformed or become outdated over the 2025-2030 period.
“However, this measure of “skill instability” has slowed compared to previous editions of the report, from 44 percent in 2023 and a high point of 57 per cent in 2020 in the wake of the pandemic,” she explained.
Zahidi said the finding could potentially be due to an increasing share of workers (50 percent) having completed training, reskilling or upskilling measures, compared to 41 per cent in the report’s 2023 edition.
She added that while global job numbers are projected to grow by 2030, existing and emerging skills differences between growing and declining roles could exacerbate existing skills gaps.
“The most prominent skills differentiating growing from declining jobs are anticipated to comprise resilience, flexibility and agility; resource management and operations; quality control; programming and technological literacy,” she said.
Zahidi noted that given the evolving skill demands, the scale of workforce upskilling and reskilling expected to be needed remains significant.
“If the world’s workforce was made up of 100 people, 59 would need training by 2030. Of these, employers foresee that 29 could be upskilled in their current roles and 19 could be upskilled and redeployed elsewhere within their organisation,” she said.
“However, 11 would be unlikely to receive the
reskilling or upskilling needed, leaving their employment prospects
increasingly at risk”
