As Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to transform the world of work, questions about how people and places can stay competitive have never been more pressing. The Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) and Lightcast recently convened a roundtable in Brussels to explore this topic, focusing on two critical angles:
The role of transversal skills (also labelled human, common or soft skills) in the age of AI
How cities and regions can adapt their strategies to prepare for future-ready workforce
The roundtable was particularly timely, given the recent release of the European Union’s report on The Future of European Competitiveness. In his foreword, the former President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, wrote of the need for a skills revolution to keep pace with the AI revolution:
We must unlock our innovative potential. This will be key not only to lead in new technologies, but also to integrate AI into our existing industries so that they can stay at the front. A central part of this agenda will be giving Europeans the skills they need to benefit from new technologies, so that technology and social inclusion go together.
The main points of the discussion are summarised below, and you can read a fuller summary by downloading the PDF.
AI: The Catalyst for Change
AI's impact is not just being seen in tech jobs, but also in non-tech jobs. For instance, our AI Global Skills Outlook showed that AI skills such as Generative AI and ChatGPT are being used in a variety of non-tech jobs, such as Researcher, Writer, and Product Manager.
Nor is the impact confined to certain places. Research by CEPS, using Lightcast job postings data, identified regional patterns of AI skills demand across Europe. They found that while skills such as AI and machine learning are predominantly concentrated in central and Western Europe, a number of Eastern European countries such as Poland, Romania, and the Czech Republic are showing significant growth, driven by growing tech hubs in cities like Warsaw and Cluj-Napoca.
The Growing Value of Transversal Skills
Yet, the future is not solely about AI skills. Transversal skills — such as adaptability, agility, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking — are increasingly being seen by employers as essential for harnessing AI in productive, ethical, and inclusive ways. Ironically, given the threat that AI is sometimes seen as in terms of replacing humans in jobs, these sorts of human-centric skills appear to be becoming more, not less, important in the age of AI.
For example, research from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) showed that AI roles frequently list critical thinking and adaptability as must-have attributes. In fact, demand for these transversal skills is climbing, even in roles directly related to AI.
One of the reasons for this is that AI's greatest promise lies in augmenting human work, not replacing it entirely. Employers are finding that those employees who blend both technical proficiency with transversal skills, are those who are better equipped to drive innovation and adapt to evolving job demands. As Mario Draghi’s report noted, "Competitiveness today is less about relative labour costs and more about knowledge and skills embodied in the labour force."
The Importance of Lifelong Learning
With AI accelerating workplace transformation, continuous upskilling is set to become vital for both employees and employers. Upskilling and reskilling should not be seen as survival strategies, but rather as essential components of remaining competitive. Lifelong learning and continuous education is set to become the norm.
However, educational institutions face immense pressure to modernise their curricula, to emphasise both AI-related skills and transversal competencies. As the Draghi report states:
While Europe should aim to match the US in terms of innovation, we should aim to exceed the US in providing opportunities for education and adult learning and good jobs for all throughout their lifetimes.
A Place-Based, Data-Driven Approach
Preparing Europe’s workforce for the AI revolution requires tailoring strategies to regional strengths and economic contexts. Regional economies are often very different, and so have different skills needs and different solutions.
Data-driven insights that identify these regional differences are therefore crucial. The roundtable highlighted how two organisations involved in regional economic planning – ART-ER in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region and Biskaia Talent in the Basque country – are using Lightcast data to understand their regional skills needs and then to align training with these needs. Both have created dashboards, designed to give regional stakeholders an understanding of the skills dynamics in their region, so they can respond based on solid evidence, rather than assumptions.
These are great examples of how these recommendations from the Draghi report can be implemented at a regional level:
The report recommends that, first, the EU and Members States enhance their use of skills intelligence by making much more intense use of data to understand and act on existing skills gaps. Second, education and training systems need to become more responsive to the changing skill needs and skill gaps identified by the skills intelligence.
Future Readiness
Lightcast’s Head of Global Research, Elena Magrini, presented some of the results of a framework we’ve been working on to measure "future-readiness." This index, which includes factors such as historic growth, durability, innovation, demographics, and education, has been used to measure the future-readiness of cities across the world.
One of the most interesting findings is that European cities lag behind their global counterparts. The first European city on the future-readiness index is London, at 24th, while Madrid is the top city in the EU, at 32nd place. This gap illustrates perfectly what the Draghi report was attempting to address: that Europe must make a series of wholesale changes, including a new, fit-for-purpose, skills policy, if European countries are to be competitive. The results of our this research will be published in full in 2025.
Conclusion
The AI revolution presents both a challenge and an opportunity. As The Future of European Competitiveness emphasised, Europe’s ability to remain competitive depends on unlocking its potential and equipping its workforce with the right skills. The CEPS/Lightcast roundtable provided a blueprint for how to achieve a future-ready workforce in the age of AI:
Make good use of skills intelligence to understand and respond to employer demand for both AI skills and complementary transversal skills.
Ensure the data being used is down to the regional level, so taking into account the nuances of skills demand that exist between different areas.
Invest in lifelong learning and continuous education, as upskilling and reskilling are vital to being able to adapt to fast-changing workforce demands.
💡 Check out some more of our pieces looking at demand for AI skills.
