Close to 40% of your existing skill sets, that you use in your workplace on a daily basis, will either be transformed or become outdated in the next five years. This is what the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Future of Jobs Report 2025, published earlier this month, states.
Generation Z or Gen Z is the largest ever generation or demographic group to live in India, standing at 377 million strong – and 1 in 4 of them are already in the workplace today — a joint report by SnapChat and Boston Consulting Group, published a few months ago, shows. Their combined consumer spending is $860 billion, which is expected to rise to $2 trillion in the next decade.
According to data from LinkedIn India’s Work Change Snapshot, 10% of the people hired in the workforce in 2024 have job titles that didn’t exist at the start of the century. The WEF report says, “Broadening digital access is expected to be the most transformative trend (going ahead) — both across technology-related trends and overall — with 60% of employers expecting it to transform their business by 2030.”
What this essentially means is that nearly half of the formal workplace will need upskilling, especially in sectors that are expanding more and more, such as:
Data science and AI modelling: Amid growing demand for skills like data analytics, data visualisation, machine learning, generative AI modelling, data mining, etc, jobs in the field have emerged too. Both the youth and corporate organisations are looking to upskill and onboard people who are up-to-date with the fast-paced growth of AI technology.
“AI and big data top the list of fastest-growing skills, followed closely by networks and cybersecurity as well as technology literacy,”
according to the Future of Jobs report by WEF.
Climate, sustainability, and clean tech: LinkedIn’s ‘Jobs on the Rise’ report 2024 had ‘sustainability manager’ listed as one of the top 25 roles that people aspire to work in. The environmental, social, and governance consulting space is growing too. The International Labour Organization had in 2018 estimated that “careers in clean energy, environmental science, policy making, and planning will create up to 24 million jobs by 2028,” something that has picked up pace rapidly post the pandemic. Roles in policy, climate research, and consulting have opened up in every major organisation — from the good old think tanks to companies like Zomato and Swiggy as well, as they try to reduce their carbon footprints.
The recent WEF report states, “Climate-change mitigation is the third-most transformative trend overall — and the top trend related to the green transition — while climate change adaptation ranks sixth with 47% and 41% of employers, respectively, expecting these trends to transform their business in the next five years.”
It went on to add, “This is driving demand for roles such as renewable energy engineers, environmental engineers and electric and autonomous vehicle specialists, all among the 15 fastest-growing jobs.”
Web development: Similar to data science, web development also has a market larger than ever before. Skills like web design, front/back-end development, UX/UI design, full-stack and database development are much more in demand as the world goes digital.
Content creation: With social media rapidly becoming a part of everything we do, more and more young people now want to do content creation and become influencers. According to a survey done by Morning Consult in 2023 with 1,000 Gen Z participants, 57% of those polled said that they want to pursue a career as an influencer.
Social media management and marketing: Hand in hand with content creation, social media management and marketing have seen a parallel rise in the space. A lot of roles demand that candidates know how to navigate search engine optimisation/marketing, campaign management, marketing automation, and sales and business development as well. With Gen Z regarded as the ‘digital natives’ of the 21st century, they are quick to adapt to these jobs and learn whatever is required on the go.