WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025: the growing and declining jobs, and what they mean for freshers

The Future of Jobs Report 2025, published by the World Economic Forum in January 2025, is usually reduced to one sentence about AI. It says something more specific. This post reads it for someone graduating now, or in their first three years of work, in India, the UAE, Germany or the UK, aiming at product, data, marketing, operations, design, sales, business development, HR or finance.

What the report is, and what it is not

The report is built on the Future of Jobs Survey 2024: more than 1,000 employers, together employing more than 14 million workers across 22 industry clusters and 55 economies, saying what they expect between 2025 and 2030.

That makes it a structured forecast from large employers, not a count of openings. The report is candid about the limit: its job totals combine employer expectations with International Labour Organization data, cover only roles where survey responses met a minimum threshold, about 1.18 billion workers in total, and should not be treated as comprehensive.

For a fresher this matters. A role can grow fast in percentage terms and still be small, and a shrinking role can still hire people to replace those who leave. Use the report to choose which part of a function to aim at, not to decide a door is shut.

The headline numbers

• 170 million new jobs between 2025 and 2030, equal to 14% of today's total employment.
• 92 million jobs displaced, equal to 8%.
• Net growth of 78 million jobs, or 7%. Creation and destruction together amount to 22% of today's jobs, which the report calls structural labour market churn.
• On average, workers can expect 39% of their existing skill sets to be transformed or outdated over the period, down from 44% in the 2023 edition and 57% in 2020.
• If the world's workforce were 100 people, 59 would need training by 2030. Employers expect 29 to be upskilled in their current roles, 19 to be upskilled and moved elsewhere in the organisation, and 11 to be unlikely to get the training they need.

Fastest growing is not the same as most hiring

The report ranks roles two ways, and they tell different stories. Ranked by percentage growth, the top 15 is dominated by technology: Big Data Specialists, FinTech Engineers, AI and Machine Learning Specialists, Software and Applications Developers and Security Management Specialists lead it. Two roles in that top 15 are not engineering roles: UI and UX Designers, in eighth place, and Data Analysts and Scientists, in eleventh.

Ranked by absolute numbers, the picture changes. Farmworkers top the list, with 35 million more jobs expected by 2030, followed by roles such as delivery drivers, building construction workers, shop salespersons and food processing workers. Among office roles, the report names General and Operations Managers and Project Managers among the categories driving the most net job growth.

Where non-engineering roles sit

The report also publishes a chart (its Figure 2.3) that orders every role meeting its response thresholds, more than 120 of them, from the highest projected net growth to the steepest net decline. Position in that ranking is relative: a role in the lower third has lower projected net growth than most, which is not the same as disappearing. Reading down it for the functions this post is written for:

• Design: UI and UX Designers are near the very top. Graphic Designers are among the 15 fastest declining roles. The report is separating design that shapes a product from design that produces assets.
• Data: Data Analysts and Scientists are in the top 15, and Business Intelligence Analysts are in the top third.
• Marketing: Digital Marketing and Strategy Specialists are in the top quarter, with E-commerce Specialists and Social Media Strategists in the top third. Telemarketers are among the fastest declining roles.
• Product and business development: Product Managers and Business Development Professionals are both in the top third. Project Managers, and Sales and Marketing Professionals, are just below them, still in the upper half.
• Operations: Supply Chain and Logistics Specialists are in the upper half. General and Operations Managers sit in the lower third by growth rate, yet appear among the largest gainers in absolute numbers, because the role is already so large.
• HR: Organisational Development Specialists are in the top quarter, and Training and Development Specialists sit around the middle. Human Resources Specialists are in the lower third, and Recruiters and Technical Recruiters in the bottom fifth.
• Finance: Financial Analysts are in the lower third. Accountants and Auditors are in the bottom fifth, and Accounting, Bookkeeping and Payroll Clerks are among the fastest declining.

The pattern runs across every function. Work that is judgement about a customer, a product or a number is rising. Work that processes a transaction or a document is falling. The report names broadening digital access, AI and information processing technologies, and robots and autonomous systems as the primary drivers of the clerical decline.

The skills the report names

Analytical thinking is the most sought-after core skill, with seven in ten surveyed companies considering it essential in 2025. It is followed by resilience, flexibility and agility, then leadership and social influence, with creative thinking fourth and motivation and self-awareness fifth. The rest of the top ten are technological literacy, empathy and active listening, curiosity and lifelong learning, talent management, and service orientation and customer service.

Looking ahead to 2030, AI and big data top the list of fastest rising skills, followed by networks and cybersecurity, technological literacy, creative thinking, resilience, flexibility and agility, and curiosity and lifelong learning. At the other end, the report expects a notable decline in demand for manual dexterity, endurance and precision.

None of these means anything written on a resume. Analytical thinking is shown by an analysis you did.

What employers say they will do about it

• 85% of surveyed employers plan to prioritise upskilling their workforce.
• 70% expect to hire staff with new skills.
• 40% plan to reduce staff whose skills become less relevant.
• Two thirds plan to hire talent with specific AI skills, while 40% expect to reduce their workforce where AI can automate tasks.

For someone entering the market, the 70% line is the door: employers expect to hire new capability, not only to retrain for it.

India, the UAE, Germany and the UK

The report includes short sections on individual economies, based on the employers surveyed in each. As of its January 2025 publication:

• India: employers expect increased digital access, geopolitical tensions and climate mitigation to shape jobs most. The projected fastest growing roles include Big Data Specialists, AI and Machine Learning Specialists and Security Management Specialists. The figure a non-engineering fresher should notice: 30% of employers in India see removing degree requirements in favour of skills-based hiring as an effective way to find talent, against 19% globally, and 67% point to tapping diverse talent pools, against 47%.
• UAE: employers expect the share of work tasks delivered mainly by autonomous technology to reach 43% within five years, against 34% globally, and 87% emphasise a rising need for technological literacy.
• Germany: 93% of employers expect AI and information processing tools to transform their operations, and 81% plan to actively hire staff with new capabilities. Growing roles named include Software Developers, UI and UX Designers, and AI and Machine Learning Specialists.
• UK: 56% of employers expect geoeconomic fragmentation to affect their strategy, against 34% globally. Rising skills named are technological literacy, AI, big data, and resilience, flexibility and agility. Growing roles named include Big Data Specialists, FinTech Engineers, and AI and Machine Learning Specialists.

For India specifically, a separate employer survey adds a fresher-level view. TeamLease EdTech's Career Outlook Report for July to December 2026 lists AI Application Developer, Jr. Semiconductor Design Engineer, Data Centre Operations Associate, Programmatic Advertising Associate and Inventory and Dispatch Executive among the leading roles for freshers. At least two of those five, the advertising and the dispatch roles, are not engineering roles.

What the ILO adds about young workers

The WEF asks employers what they expect. The International Labour Organization counts people. Its Global Employment Trends for Youth 2026, released on 11 August 2026, puts the global youth unemployment rate at 12.4% in 2025, equivalent to 67 million unemployed people aged 15 to 24, and the share of young people not in employment, education or training at 20%, more than 257 million people.

The ILO also reports that jobs which have traditionally been entry points for young workers, including clerical and administrative roles, service and sales occupations, manufacturing-related jobs and some technical occupations, are shrinking. It estimates that 6.1% of jobs held by people aged 15 to 29 are in occupations highly exposed to AI-related change. Regional figures vary widely: youth unemployment was 15% in Northern, Southern and Western Europe in 2025 and 26.2% in the ILO's Arab States subregion. Those are regional averages, not figures for any one country.

Read together, the two reports say the same thing: the traditional first job, processing and administering, is thinning.

What to do with this as a fresher

• Aim at the growing half of your function: product-facing UX rather than asset production, analysis rather than bookkeeping, digital strategy and e-commerce rather than outbound calling, organisational development rather than transactional recruiting.
• Show analytical thinking with an artifact: a product teardown, a dashboard on public data, a campaign post-mortem with the numbers.
• Treat AI and data literacy as the baseline for every function, not a specialism.
• In India, employers are more open than their global peers to dropping degree filters. Bring evidence of skill instead.
• Then look at real openings rather than forecasts: product roles, data roles, marketing roles, design roles, operations roles, or everything open in India, the UAE, Germany and the UK.

Employers are moving from asking where you studied to asking what you can do. A verified skill answers that before the interview does.