Unlocking Opportunity

A Global Framework for Enabling Transitions to the Jobs of Tomorrow

Job transitions increase efficiency, reduce unemployment, and enable workers to earn higher salaries.

As the global labor market undergoes profound transformation, facilitating those transitions is essential.

The World Economic Forum and Lightcast have partnered to identify transitions that are actually happening all over the world and strategies that can promote more of those changes in the future. If workers can move to jobs that provide economic benefit to themselves and to the broader economy, we can create a job market that works for everyone.

The Unlocking Opportunity report lays out a framework of four principles that can improve positive job transitions, then provides a regional analysis that uses Lightcast data to identify some of the most common, and most beneficial, job transitions that occur throughout the world. Each of those regional highlights include case studies that demonstrate what successful job-transition initiatives can look like.

Report Highlight

Fundamental, Far-Reaching Change

The accelerating pace of change in today’s global labor market means there is an increasing need for a more purposeful approach. The global labor market is experiencing a ground-shifting change that emphasizes the need for strategic workforce planning and talent development to prepare for disruptions ahead.

By 2027, 23% of all jobs in the world will be different, either new since 2023 or having disappeared since then. Since so many workers will need to change jobs, the process needs to be as smooth as possible.

Projected total global job growth and loss, 2023-2027

Four Levers to Promote Job Transitions

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Reskilling and Upskilling

As jobs change, so do the tasks that need to be completed and the skills required to complete them. A cultural shift towards continuous learning and adaptability is fundamental to support all other drivers of job transitions. Adopting a common, standardized skills taxonomy and enabling credential and competency portability allow workers to transition more easily between roles, industries and regions, empowering them to pursue new opportunities.

Improving Employee/Employer Matching

Employers can improve job-matching efficiency by promoting job flexibility and alternative employment arrangements, enabling more inclusive access and entry into the labor market. This can bring people with time and location restrictions into the workforce, when otherwise they might have given up on their job search altogether.

Worker Safety Nets

The World Economic Forum provides guidance to state leaders as well as enterprises, so these last two levers are primarily directed at national governments. Robust and agile social safety nets are essential for supporting individuals through job transitions, extended career changes or unforeseen issues, ensuring that workers can maintain a decent standard of living throughout the process.

Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration

If everyone contributes to smoother job transitions, everyone benefits. The report recommends governments partner with businesses and educational institutions to implement targeted reskilling and reemployment programs, facilitating job transitions within or between industries.

Job Transition Trends Across the Globe

The paper's analysis is based on empirical data from 14 economies across seven global regions: East Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, North America, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

For each region, we examine data on job transitions from online job postings and highlight specific job transitions that characterize the region’s potential for successfully adapting to the labour-market transformation. Here are just a few examples of transitions we mapped. More extensive analysis can be found in the full Unlocking Opportunity report.

Building a Future-Ready Workforce

Enabling successful job transitions in today’s rapidly evolving labor market requires a multipronged approach involving employers, employees, governments, and workforce technology providers. In order to building a resilient and adaptable workforce, concerted efforts from all stakeholders are essential, and so is a cultural shift towards embracing lifelong learning.

Job transitions are fundamental to the future of work.

The Unlocking Opportunity report uses the world's most comprehensive labor market data to make clear how, why, and where workers are changing jobs, and what governments and HR leaders can do to improve the process moving forward. In a labor market defined by change, adaptation is crucial.

Unlocking Opportunity: A Global Framework for Enabling Transitions to the Jobs of Tomorrow is available now.

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