Impact

Reskilling Revolution: Preparing 1 billion people for tomorrow’s economy

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The Reskilling Revolution focuses on sourcing commitments, co-creating solutions and connecting stakeholders to promote future-ready workforces. Image: Getty Images

  • There is an urgent need for investment in reskilling and lifelong learning to catalyze systemic change, close national skills gaps, and encourage industry-led collaboration on skills mapping and talent development.
  • Over the next five years, 22% of today’s global jobs will change due to technological advancements, the transition to a more sustainable economy, demographic and geoeconomic shifts. These labour market shifts are also driving significant skills demand, with employers anticipating that nearly 60% of workers will need upskilling by 2030.
  • Founded in January 2020, the mission of the World Economic Forum's Reskilling Revolution is to reach 1 billion people with better education, skills and economic opportunities by 2030.

The impact of the reskilling revolution.

At the half way mark of the initiative in January 2025, more than 716 million people around the world are set to be reached through the World Economic Forum’s Reskilling Revolution initiative. This ambitious programme is preparing the global workforce with the skills needed to future-proof their careers, amidst deep transformation driven by technological change, the green transition, demographic and geoeconomic shifts.

While most efforts are focused on digital skills such as AI, big data and technological literacy, business leaders also strongly emphasize attitudes and human-centric skills like leadership, curiosity and building resilience. Over half of Reskilling Revolution efforts additionally place great weight on preparing workers for green jobs.

At the heart of the initiative is a longstanding commitment from over 35 CEOs and leaders from international organizations, government and civil society who champion the centrality of a skilled workforce in creating a dynamic path ahead. This commitment envisions a thriving and more equitable future where individuals can unlock productivity gains, fuel economic growth, drive major transformations, and foster opportunities for human fulfillment.

The Reskilling Revolution has mobilized a multistakeholder community of over 350 organizations. Founding members include the Adecco Group, the government of UAE, iamtheCODE, Infosys, LinkedIn, ManpowerGroup, PwC, Salesforce and UNICEF.

More widely, this community includes leaders from the private and public sectors, academia and civil society, leading the global reskilling narrative across industries and geographies. They include architects of reskilling initiatives, funders, implementers, service providers, unions and many others working together to advance this global effort. The initiatives comprise various active communities, such as Chief Learning Officers, Future Skills Alliance and Education 4.0 Alliance. It also includes a growing network of Skills and Education Accelerators. These national accelerators connect best-in-class ideas and practical implementation across countries and sectors, creating a unique network for sharing ideas, collaborations and practices. The network encompasses countries such as Bangladesh, Brazil, Turkey, Pakistan, Vietnam and Qatar.

What’s the challenge?

Technological change, geoeconomic trends and the green transition are fundamentally transforming labor markets and skills expectations, creating the opportunity for productivity growth, innovation and climate resilience, but also posing challenges through job displacement, skills mismatches and inequitable access to opportunity.

The Future of Jobs Report 2025 indicates that employers expect that by 2030, 34% of work tasks will be automated. Urgent investment in human capital is therefore needed to create a fairer world by ensuring people are given the chance to fulfil their potential and thrive.

Businesses cite skills gaps as the number one barrier to the organizational and digital transformation, and therefore a risk to competitiveness, growth and technology investment. Lack of alignment between workforce skills and business needs puts a drag on growth and innovation. Skill gaps pose great risks to people’s livelihoods and are fundamentally transforming labour markets, creating opportunities for productivity growth, innovation and climate resilience, but also pose risks through job displacement, skills mismatches and inequitable access to opportunity.

Have you read?

The Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 estimates a net increase of 78 million jobs globally, offering a positive net employment outlook. However, robust skill development efforts are needed to equip workers with the necessary skills to thrive in collaboration with technology. If current trends persist, outdated learning programmes risk widening skills gaps, exacerbating mismatches in the future labour market.

In today’s fast evolving labour market, a common skills language and a skills-first approach are more crucial than ever to ensure that businesses and individuals alike can identify and develop the skills they need to thrive.

Only 0.5% of global gross domestic product (GDP) is currently invested toward adult lifelong learning. Yet Forum research conducted in collaboration with PwC shows that investment in reskilling and upskilling of the current global workforce has the potential to boost GDP by $6.5 trillion by 2030, while investing in future-ready education for today’s generation of school children could add an addition $2.54 trillion over the same period.

Reskilling is not just about adapting to change; it is about empowering people and communities to thrive in an intelligent age. At Sonae, we believe we bear this responsibility, and we are committed to this transformative journey, ensuring that innovation and opportunity go hand in hand to build a more inclusive and resilient future for all.

—Claudia Azevedo, CEO, Sonae

Claudia Azevedo, CEO, Sonae

Our approach to reskilling.

The Forum has built the Reskilling Revolution platform around a three-pronged approach to creating tangible impact:

  • Sourcing commitment
  • Co-creating solutions
  • Connecting stakeholders

The initiative's roadmap for 2025-2026 includes accelerating reskilling and upskilling worldwide, surfacing AI-enhanced learning models and driving geographic impact through country accelerators. Impact is achieved through a combination of partner-led initiatives that are either focused on their own workforces or externally-facing, as well as through country-level strategy development and implementation on skills and education.

For example, within the Accelerator network, Brazil’s Skills Accelerator has successfully enrolled 3.4 million individuals in their training courses since 2022. Companies consistently provide updates on upskilling and reskilling figures, utilizing a network of industry-focused technical and vocational education providers in Brazil – the SENAI platform – to offer transformative training courses and raise awareness among employees. The Accelerator will harness the potential presented by Brazil’s new Industrial Plan to continue delivering valuable support to key industries and the subsequent skills and training required. As a result, the Accelerator programme is firmly on course to impact the lives of 8 million Brazilians by 2030.

The Reskilling Revolution platform also features a new round of business commitments for 2025, including from Intel, which accelerates the inclusive growth of AI; Cognizant that aims to develop digital literacy, generative AI, and other cutting-edge technology skills to build the future workforce; as well as various initiatives across the Global Shapers Hubs.

As technological change accelerates, education systems are also adapting. The recent report Shaping the Future of Learning: The Role of AI in Education, explores how the adoption of emerging technologies in education, particularly AI, can unlock solutions for improving global education systems. If harnessed wisely, they hold the promise of transforming education and enabling Education 4.0 – a teaching and learning approach that focuses on providing learners with the abilities, skills, attitudes and values for the future. To unlock the transformative potential of these technologies to enhance learning outcomes, the Forum’s Education 4.0 initiative focused on four key strategies: generating high-quality insights and tools, engaging influential education leaders, mobilizing the global education industry, and accelerating robust national public-private partnerships.

Get involved.

We invite you to join our movement of leaders taking action today and learn how your organization can contribute to the Reskilling Revolution initiative. Together we can work toward a future where technology empowers individuals and supports inclusive growth.

The Forum’s Centre for the New Economy and Society is the focal point for the Reskilling Revolution. The Centre aims to advance prosperous, inclusive and equitable economies and societies. Working together, stakeholders deepen their understanding of complex issues, shape new models and standards and drive scalable, collaborative action for systemic change.

Leading global companies and international, civil society and academic organizations currently work through the Centre for the New Economy and Society to promote new approaches to competitiveness, deploy education and skills for tomorrow’s workforce, build a new pro-worker and pro-business agenda for jobs, and integrate equality and inclusion into the new economy.

Contact us to learn more and work with us.

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