A report from the Institute for the Future says that eighty-five percent of the jobs that our current students will have in 2030 don’t exist yet. In such a case how are we, as teachers, supposed to prepare students for jobs that don’t exist yet?
According the the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 50% of all employees will need re-skilling by 2025. Half of us will need to re-skill in the next five years, due to the "double-disruption" of the impacts of the pandemic and increasing automation transforming the jobs.
As a result of the twin forces of the Fourth Industrial revolution and the COVID-19 recession, day-to-day digitalization has leapt forward, with a large-scale shift to remote working and e-commerce, driving a surge in work-from-home arrangements and a new marketplace for remote work. However, it has also brought about significant well-being challenges as workers have struggled to adapt to new ways of work over a short period of time.
The very technological disruption that is transforming jobs can also provide the key to creating them – and help us learn new skills. The Forum estimates that by 2025, 85 million jobs may be displaced by a shift in the division of labor between humans and machines. But even more jobs – 97 million – may emerge that are more adapted to the new division of labor between humans, machines and algorithms.
Greater adoption of technology will mean in-demand skills across jobs change over the next five years, and skills gaps will continue to be high. For those workers who stay in their roles, the share of core skills that will change by 2025 is 40%, and 50% of all employees will need re-skilling (up 4%).
-The vast majority of business leaders (94%) now expect employees to pick up new skills on the job – a sharp rise from 65% in 2018.
-Respondents to the Future of Jobs Survey estimate that around 40% of workers will require re-skilling of six months or less, but that number is higher for those in the consumer industry and in the health and healthcare industry.
-In the financial services and energy sectors, that share of workers who can be re-skilled within six months is lower because they will need more time-intensive programs.
-The pandemic has accelerated the trend of online re-skilling. Between April and June this year, Coursera saw a fourfold increase in the numbers of people seeking out opportunities for themselves.
-Employers providing online learning opportunities for their workers increased fivefold and there was a nine fold enrolment increase for learners accessing online resources through government programs.
The top 15 skills that will be highly demanded by 2025 are enumerated below:
1) Analytical thinking and innovation
2) Active Learning and learning strategies.
3) Complex-problem solving
4) Critical thinking and analysis
5) Creativity, Originality and initiative
6) Leadership, social influence, and people management.
7) Technology use, monitoring and control.
8) Technology design and programming.
9) Resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility.
10) Reasoning, trouble-shooting and user experience.
11) Emotional Intelligence.
12) Service Orientation.
13) Collaboration and coordination.
14) Systems Analysis.
15) Persuasion and Negotiation.
Besides the above mentioned skills Typing is another fundamental skill that will remain in significance in the future as well. Whether the student graduates with degree in engineering, computer science, commerce, management, architecture, arts or even in medicine he / she will spend hours using a keyboard for both professional and personal reasons. The sooner students memorize a key-board; the more useful this skill will be in their future jobs.
The Future of Jobs Survey indicates that company adaptation to the newly remote and hybrid workplace is already underway. Ensuring employee well-being is among the key measures undertaken by business leaders looking to effectively shift to remote work. In particular, 34% of leaders report that they are taking steps to create a sense of community among employees online and looking to tackle the well-being challenges posed by the shift to remote work. As can be witnessed from the Future of Jobs Report 2020 even the teachers of today need to be ready to undergo re-skilling, so that they may transfer the right kind of skills to the students.
Reference:
World Economic Forum- Future of Jobs Report 2020
