Redrawing the Geography of Jobs / Davos 2025

Summary

This panel discussion at the World Economic Forum focused on the changing geography of jobs and its impact on global labor markets. The conversation explored the mismatch between job locations and available talent, particularly in light of demographic shifts and technological advancements.

Key trends highlighted included aging populations in developed countries, leading to increased reliance on immigrant workers for various sectors. The panelists noted that Africa stands out as a continent with a young, growing population, presenting both opportunities and challenges for global talent distribution.

The discussion touched on the role of technology in reshaping work, with remote work enabling some jobs to be done from anywhere. However, it was emphasized that many jobs, especially in blue-collar sectors, still require physical presence. The potential of AI to increase productivity in white-collar jobs was discussed, along with the need for continuous reskilling of the workforce.

Panelists debated strategies for addressing the global job-talent mismatch, including migration policies, investment in local job creation, and skills development. The importance of aligning education systems with future job market needs was stressed, as was the need to value and adequately compensate essential blue-collar jobs.

The conversation also covered the challenges of informal employment in Africa, the potential of the green economy to create jobs, and the need for regional planning in workforce development. The panel concluded by emphasizing the critical role of businesses and governments in addressing the evolving geography of jobs, suggesting that this issue will be a defining feature of global politics and business strategy in the coming decades.

Keypoints

Major discussion points:

– The mismatch between where jobs are located and where workers are available, particularly between developed and developing countries

– The role of migration in addressing labor shortages and the political challenges around immigration

– The potential and limitations of remote work and technology in connecting workers to jobs globally

– The need for education, skills development, and reskilling to prepare workers for future job markets

– Creating job opportunities locally in developing regions like Africa to retain talent and support economic growth

Overall purpose:

The goal of this discussion was to explore the changing geography of jobs globally and how to address mismatches between labor supply and demand across different regions. The panel aimed to examine strategies like migration, remote work, education, and local job creation to better connect workers to employment opportunities.

Tone:

The tone was primarily analytical and solution-oriented, with panelists offering data, insights and recommendations based on their expertise. There was a sense of urgency about addressing these challenges, but the tone remained constructive and optimistic about potential solutions. The discussion became more nuanced as it progressed, acknowledging complexities around issues like brain drain and cultural attitudes toward different types of work.

Speakers

– David Bach: President of IMD

– Nacho De Marco: Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Bears Dev USA

– Amy Pope: Director General of the International Organization for Migration

– Hisayuki Idekoba: President, Chief Executive Officer, and Representative Director of the Board of Recruit Holdings

– Erika Kraemer Mbula: Professor of Economics at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa

Additional speakers:

– Audience member: Suin Lee, social entrepreneur working in education sector

– Audience member: Shona, Schwab Fellow from South Africa

The Changing Geography of Jobs: Addressing Global Labour Market Challenges

This panel discussion explored the evolving landscape of global labour markets, focusing on the mismatch between job locations and available talent. The conversation, featuring experts from diverse backgrounds, delved into demographic shifts, technological advancements, and strategies to address the changing geography of jobs.

Demographic Trends and Migration

A central theme of the discussion was the impact of demographic shifts on labour markets. Hisayuki Idekoba, CEO of Recruit Holdings, highlighted the ageing populations in developed countries, leading to increased reliance on immigrant workers. He provided striking data, noting that “90% of workers are immigrants and when we think about each segment, 68% of farmers are immigrants and agriculture jobs and 30% of hospitality workers and 30% of factory workers are immigrants and 20-25% of healthcare workers are immigrants.” This statistic underscored the critical role of migration in filling labour shortages in developed economies.

Amy Pope, Director General of the International Organization for Migration, echoed this sentiment, emphasising migration as a key source of workers for many industries in developed countries. However, she also pointed out the challenges faced by communities in regions like Africa, where population growth outpaces job creation.

Erika Kraemer Mbula, Professor of Economics at the University of Johannesburg, added nuance to the migration discussion. While acknowledging its importance, she stressed the need to balance migration with retaining skilled workers in developing countries to support local economic growth.

Technology and Remote Work

The role of technology in reshaping work emerged as another significant topic. Nacho De Marco, CEO of Bears Dev USA, highlighted how technology enables remote work and global talent matching. He expressed optimism about technology’s potential to increase productivity across various sectors and specifically mentioned Starlink’s potential to provide internet access in remote areas, further expanding remote work opportunities.

Idekoba offered a more cautious perspective, noting that while remote work enables access to global talent, it is not applicable to all jobs, particularly in blue-collar sectors. This difference in viewpoints highlighted the complexity of technology’s impact on labour markets.

The discussion also touched on the potential of AI to increase productivity in white-collar jobs. Both Pope and De Marco suggested that AI and automation may have a more immediate impact on white-collar jobs, challenging the common perception that automation primarily affects blue-collar work.

Skills Development and Education

The panellists agreed on the critical importance of skills development and education reform to meet changing job market demands. De Marco emphasised the need for reskilling and upskilling workers, while Pope advocated for vocational training alongside university education.

An audience member, Suin Lee, raised the issue of mismatches between education systems and labour market needs, citing the oversupply of university graduates in Korea. This point highlighted an unexpected complexity in global labour market dynamics, contrasting with the general discussion about skill shortages. Similar challenges were noted for Côte d’Ivoire, emphasizing the global nature of this issue.

De Marco pointed out the potential of technology to revolutionise education and skills training, stating, “Technology has actually made education significantly easier. Significantly easier. AI particularly, for generating content for training, it’s extraordinary, right?”

Kraemer Mbula highlighted initiatives in Africa for skills development, including coding bootcamps and partnerships between universities and industry to create more relevant curricula.

Creating Local Job Opportunities

Kraemer Mbula emphasised the importance of developing local industries and ecosystems in Africa to create job opportunities. She proposed a balanced approach, stating, “We would like to prepare young Africans to serve the needs for talent in other parts of the world, but also to create opportunities where they are. And I think that is the key. And perhaps those two objectives can be achieved simultaneously due to the opportunities that are open through remote work.”

She also brought attention to the often-overlooked informal sector, noting, “But let’s remember that 80% of employment in Africa is informal. Yes. And it spans across all sectors, retail, manufacturing, services of all types and so on. We also have subsistence agriculture.” This comment broadened the conversation to consider how to improve and formalise existing informal employment.

David Bach, President of IMD, stressed the need for policies to attract investment and create jobs locally. The potential of the green economy and tech hubs in creating opportunities was also discussed.

Unresolved Issues and Future Considerations

While the panel reached consensus on several key points, some issues remained unresolved. These included how to balance the migration needs of developed countries with retaining skilled workers in developing countries, addressing cultural stigma around vocational and blue-collar jobs, and effectively integrating people with disabilities into the global workforce.

The discussion touched on the need to re-evaluate and increase pay for high-demand jobs in sectors like healthcare and construction. Idekoba highlighted the chicken-and-egg problem regarding job preferences and salaries, noting that societal perceptions often influence both career choices and wage levels.

An audience question raised the important issue of employment opportunities for people with disabilities, highlighting the need for inclusive labour market strategies.

Bach concluded by summarizing three main approaches to addressing the mismatch between jobs and people: migration, remote work, and bringing work to where people are. The panellists agreed that this issue would be a defining feature of global politics and business strategy in the coming decades, requiring nuanced, context-specific solutions to global labour market challenges.

David Bach: Thank you for watching! If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. I’m happy to help. I’ll be happy to help. Thank you for watching! I hope you enjoyed this video. If you have any questions, please comment below. I’ll be happy to help. I’ll see you next time. Bye! Good morning, everybody. Good afternoon. If you’re following us from Asia, we have many people joining this conversation online. My name is David Bach. I’m the president of IMD. I’m absolutely delighted to welcome you to this conversation on redrawing the geography of jobs. We have a terrific panel that I’ll introduce in a moment. But let me say a word first on why this is such an important topic and conversation here at the annual meeting. As well as in many other settings at this time. Of course, much of the conversation is about artificial intelligence, the promise, the potential of AI. There’s an important conversation almost right away about the impact on jobs. And that conversation is very often framed around the skills that are required. Organizational changes. And we sometimes lose sight that one of the most important questions that we have to ask ourselves is, how do we make the most of the opportunities that we have? How do we make the most of the opportunities that we have? How do we make the most of the opportunities that we have? How do we make the most of the opportunities that we have? And so, it’s important to recognize, and to hear the conversation from the panel, that one of the most important questions when it comes to the future of work is in fact the geography of work. And the demography of work. And how that is emerging and evolving. So, I’m going to move to a few questions. And I’ll move to a few questions. I’ll start with the first question, which is how do we make the most of the opportunities that we have? And how do we make the most of the opportunities that we have? And I’ll move to a few questions. First of all, the geography of work. And the demography of work. And, of course, while we’re going to talk in this panel about the impact of technology, it’s really important to have this broader global perspective on where work is going to be and how we get people ready to take advantage of the opportunities of that. We have a terrific panel. I’ll introduce each panelist, and then we’ll get going into the conversation. We’ll involve all of you, of course, as well. I’m going from my left all the way down. Hisayuki Edokoba-Deko is the President, Chief Executive Officer, and Representative Director of the Board of Recruit Holdings from Japan. Welcome to you. We have Amy Pope. Delighted to have you, Director General of the International Organization for Migration based in Geneva. Next to her is Erika Kramer Mbula. She’s Professor of Economics, and she’s at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. We’re very glad to have you. And at the end, Nacho DeMarco, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Bears Dev USA. Welcome to you as well. So Deko, why don’t we jump right in? You said in our previous conversation your team has prepared you with a lot of data that you’re keen to share with us. As you look high level at demographic, geographic, geoeconomic, technological shifts affecting the labor market, what does the data tell you? What are some of the key trends that you think every leader needs to be aware of? Yeah.

Hisayuki Idekoba: So we, Recruit Holdings, are a global tech company. Our portfolio companies like Indeed.com or Grassdoor.com, we are having over 300 million job seekers every month, and 3.5 million employers are trying to hire people through our platforms like Indeed.com. And what we are seeing is a huge, more like a long-term demographic change of almost all developed countries and so basically all developed countries working kind of what workers are getting to be old aging population right and so for example in the US we don’t have good growth of a working-age population from the native born workers point of view and in the US last five years u.s. added 4 million workers but at 90% of of this workers are immigrants and when we think about each segments 68% of farmers are immigrants and agriculture jobs and 30% of hospitality workers and 30% of factory workers are immigrants and 20 25% of healthcare workers are immigrants so of course there’s more conversation in all developed countries government about more like a restrictive policy about the immigrants but immigrants are having huge role of all developed countries labor market and it’s not only used at u.s. and of course Canada Australia have roughly 26% of workers are immigrants and u.s. is 19% and Germany has high teens and France is 10% Japan is 30% but overall immigrants are getting to be more important and one interesting thing is like for example we see general optic trend of job cricks are coming from outside the these countries So, for example, in the UK, roughly 5% of job clicks are coming outside of the UK. It’s growing compared with the pre-pandemic level, which was 3%. And also from employers’ side, we see kind of interesting data, which is like English not required job. For example, in UK, roughly 3%-ish of jobs are English not required jobs. In Netherlands, almost 8% not required Dutch, and Spain is almost 6%. And in general, these trends are growing. And also one more thing, especially in UK, visa sponsorship jobs are also increasing. And for example, a pharmacy job is almost 4%, 4% to 5% jobs are saying visa sponsorship.

David Bach: So that’s the change, big trend we are seeing with demographic change and basically the policy changes. Thank you for that. And you made the link, of course, immediately to migration. If you have jobs in one place and a young workforce in another place, there is pressure to move. And of course, seeking better employment and a better livelihood is an important driver of migration. Amy, what is it that you see in your data? Does it correspond to what Deco just shared? To what extent does the geography of jobs impact migratory patterns?

Amy Pope: It has a huge impact. I think it’s important, especially at this moment in time when we are watching a new American administration come in, which is really focused on irregular migration. Likewise, in Europe, we’ve seen a very significant uptick in irregular migration. And what we are realizing when you speak to many of the people who are coming across is that fewer than 50% of them, often 40% of them, are coming because they’re seeking asylum. Frankly, many, many, the majority of people are coming because they just don’t have job opportunities at home. And they know, because the evidence is showing us, that if they can make it into the United States, if they can make it into Europe, they will find employment in the informal sector. And so that then fuels more irregular migration. What we’re also seeing, though, is that there are huge pressures on communities, lack of economic opportunity. You look at the population of Africa, which has the highest growing number of young people, but not the same kind of growth in terms of job opportunities. So when you think about how are we going to meet the needs of the future, we don’t have jobs to match talent, for example, across the continent. But within North America, within Europe, within Japan and the Republic of Korea, we don’t have the talent to match the jobs. It’s also really important to recognize this is not just about doctors and engineers and high tech workers, which is, I know, what we all talk about. It’s things like construction and nursing care, elder care, service industry, the things that are AI are not going to be able to plug.

David Bach: Thank you for that. So jobs in one place, a youthful population in another. You mentioned Africa already. Erica, the data are clear. We have aging populations just about everywhere. Africa is the one place where we have growth in the young population. You’ll probably share some data with us. What are the opportunities to create more employment in Africa to leverage what is often referred to as this demographic dividend that Africa is experiencing now?

Erika Kraemer Mbula: It’s interesting, because we are referring to Africa is the young continent. And when I talk to my historian and paleontologist colleagues, they always remind me that this is the oldest continent when it comes to the origin of civilization and the cradle of humankind. Let’s say youthful rather than youngest. That’s better. Exactly. But in terms of demographic, it is a young continent. 60% of our population are below the age of 25. It stands out as a beacon of youth in the labor force, in the present and looking into the future. By 2050, about one out of three people, if not more, of people of working age would be African. So yes, it’s about how do we use this as an opportunity for transformative change and also to establish Africa as a pool for, as a hub for global talent. We would like to prepare young Africans to serve the needs for talent in other parts of the world, but also to create opportunities where they are. And I think that is the key. And perhaps those two objectives can be achieved simultaneously due to the opportunities that are open through remote work. And several countries are already tapping into that. We have a growing tech hub ecosystem in the continent. You see cities like Cape Town, Nairobi, Lagos, with this bubbling ecosystem of entrepreneurs that are contributing with their work to global markets, but also creating opportunities and jobs for others. Now, is that happening at a sufficient scale? Obviously not. And what kind of actions need to be taken from both private sector and government is another part of the discussion that perhaps I can engage. I think there are great opportunities. I just listened in the previous session to Vice President Al Gore, who was talking about the opportunities in the green economy. And Africa stands out as having sort of all the ingredients for this perfect storm, right? It’s got a young population that is eager to learn, that is eager to succeed, that is eager to work. that is increasingly utilizing digital technologies that has a deep understanding of social issues often from lived experience, that lives in an environment, I mean, there’s the urban and the rural, but in a context of rich natural resources, how do you tap into all of that and provide the necessary skills, technical skills that can supplement that more experiential lived knowledge and expertise that can be a great advantage for green jobs?

David Bach: You describe Africa as a global talent hub and future global talent hub. Just a quick aside, IND, we’re a relatively small business school, but at this point, almost 10% of our staff is in Cape Town. And we set up an innovation hub and the talent is extraordinary, but not only the talent as you described, it’s the passion, the energy, the commitment. So we’re incredibly grateful to be able to tap into that talent. And of course, that’s a very skilled population there, but the issue of skills, Nacho, is one that you think about a lot because it’s not just enough to say jobs here, a young population there, technology that can connect them. We need the skill development and that’s an area where you and your team at Bears Dev do a lot of work. Tell us a bit about how you’re using technology to help upskill such that places like Africa and many others around the world can become these talent hubs. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for the question.

Nacho De Marco: Obviously, there’s a lot that technology has done already to allow regions where traditionally wouldn’t get access to quality jobs, start getting into high paying jobs that substantially increase the quality of life. However, there’s a lot to be done. And some of the things technology has done, for example, you can start even from identifying today through our markets. skill gap analysis, with technologies that didn’t exist before, processing large volumes of data. And even DECO can probably attest to this, their company can even tell you pretty much what skills are in demand, what skills are not. And that leads to a number of different things that come after. I would say, potentially, the second thing I would talk about has to do with AI-powered recruitment platforms and technologies that allow you to match people that have certain skills with the jobs you need to fill in a much more effective way than you could do before. This is not future technology, that technology is already there. We use it internally, but we’re just one example of a company that does that. Companies can do it very efficiently, very quickly, and very well. That not only allows you to fill jobs that you need to fill, because the interesting part is that, although you may argue, and it’s true, that in certain geographies, they’re not really well-protected and they’re not getting really quality jobs, at the same time, there is a certain gap somewhere that can be filled with that region that maybe does not get that. So by allowing you to understand skills for individuals and people and what’s needed, you can automatically, if you will, and much more efficiently, match those things. There are certain other things which have really helped a lot. I believe, obviously, we’re a living testament of that, but remote work enablement. And of course, I’ll talk about some other jobs as well who may not be tech-related, of course, or maybe not in an office, if you will, but remote work enablement, things like Starlink. I haven’t really heard a lot of people through this week in Davos talk about Starlink and what that really implies. We hire people. everywhere, mostly in Latin America, but everywhere, in little towns, really rural areas. And, you know, without Internet, even if you’re the most brilliant engineer or you’re the most brilliant worker, it’s very, very hard to really get a job. You know, high quality jobs, for the most part, require you to have some sort of Internet access, right? I heard from a person who runs W3C that, you know, about 30% of the world does not have access to Internet. I don’t know if you can grasp that idea for a second. Imagine your lives without Internet, right? And so, Starlink… Sounds amazing. My wife would be very happy with it. But, that said, you know, imagine how hard it can be, right? And the fact that now they have access to Internet, of course, governments need to do their job to, you know, have those technologies, have the regulations in place to get that going as fast as they possibly can, but that opens up possibilities for a lot of people who, up to yesterday, they couldn’t really get those jobs. There are more… Actually, you know, we talked about migration. Migration today is a hot topic, right? We’re gonna hear a lot in the coming months, especially in the United States. I think we all know it. You know, I’m a living example of migration. I moved to the United States over a decade ago to look for better opportunities. Did I want to? Not really. I would have rather stayed at home with my family, with my friends, with my community. If you really allow different geographies to get quality jobs, not only they’re gonna be better off, but this conversation about migration may just almost entirely go away. So, I just wanted to comment on that because I feel like, you know, we always talk about that and there’s certainly things you can do to sort of

Amy Pope: remove that conversation, if you will. is going to go away. I think it’s going to be a different conversation. I think at some point we’re going to have the economies of Europe and the United States and Canada and everybody else fighting over migrants to come and work in these jobs where they do not have the talent they need to meet the labor needs.

David Bach: Because it is indeed perplexing, right? I mean, you look at the geography of jobs and you feel that the immigration debate, particularly the way it has been framed in rich countries recently, is the exact opposite of what the debate ought to be. It should be about how do we attract the talent to meet the needs. Would either of you want to speak? I don’t know, Deco, if you see this in your data, Amy, and some of the research that you do, what does it look like when countries actually do that well, when they lean into the opportunities that migration provides around jobs? You mentioned, Deco, that a growing percentage of jobs on your platform now come with visa sponsorship. It sounded like it’s still a relatively small percentage. But what does that look like when companies and when countries lean into the opportunities that migration provides around jobs? Is anybody doing it well? That’s what you’re thinking.

Amy Pope: That’s the question I’m asking. So let me just give you a little bit of information. The US, for example, has about 66,000 visas for lower-skilled workers. But the US has an unemployment rate in construction that is at 0%. 66,000 workers is not enough construction workers to rebuild homes post this crazy wildfire, the fires that are playing out in Southern California right now. So how does anybody then rely on the regular migration system to meet their workforce needs? There are great examples. I think probably the country that I hold out as a standout here is Canada. But, and this is a huge but, Canada has looked at it only from the labor market needs and family reunification needs. They actually haven’t then taken into account, what’s the impact on housing? What’s the impact on social services? What’s the impact on urban growth? So they actually are having a backlash moment where people are saying, wait a minute, do we have too many migrants coming? in, because we don’t have housing, but the construction industry is saying, but we need more migrants to build the housing, right? So it really needs to be a

Erika Kraemer Mbula: much broader conversation. Go ahead, Erika. Such an interesting discussion, because I think it’s, you know, from an African perspective, it’s also about balancing that with not hollowing out the skills that we sorely need, right? We need engineers, we need technicians, we need to build our green economy, our manufacturing sector, our services. So I think it is, obviously, it’s a balancing act, right, on how to do that, and I think from the African perspective it’s important to do skills development and invest massively on skills development, and there are excellent programs, examples in South Africa, in Rwanda, in Ghana, all over the place about how to do this effectively and how to do it well. It’s a matter of scaling it up, always the issue of funding, and also supplementing that with access to capital and finance, support for SMMEs, which are the largest employer in the continent. So to create an ecosystem that can absorb some of those skills, so they can contribute to build the communities, the regions, the countries, while at the same time supporting the global labour markets, and I think that is something that needs to be discussed in terms of multilateralism and cooperation, and coming together and thinking about how do we also take advantage of the possibilities of remote work. Listen, when people are talented and skilled, not everybody wants to live. Some people want to stay in their communities and work within their context and so on, but if there’s not enough to absorb their skills, if there’s not enough industry, if there’s not enough economic activity, they will have to go to apply their skills somewhere else.

Nacho De Marco: To add on top of what Erika just said, technology has actually made education significantly easier. Significantly easier. AI particularly, for generating content for training, it’s extraordinary, right? AI has advantages and disadvantages, but that’s a clear advantage. Think about platforms like Udemy, Coursera, Duolingo, but there are many more, even for training, you know, construction workers for training, you know, manufacturing workers. Technology has really allowed us to lower the cost of education significantly, and I think not only this is applicable to governments, where it should probably take a leap and try to educate their workers, but even companies. I think this is really applicable to everyone here in this room, probably. So that’s something that I’m very confident that as cost of education lowers, potentially more and

David Bach: more people in different geographies may be able to get simply better jobs. So let’s explore both of these things, right? So we talked about migration as one way of achieving this matching of where jobs are and where people are, but Erika, your point is so well taken. This hollowing out is a real concern, and in the past, the price for those communities has been high when people migrated elsewhere. Let’s talk about the other way then, bringing jobs to where people are, which we can do in two ways, via technology and physically. Let’s explore the physical part second, and we’ll talk about manufacturing and investments in places like Africa, but let’s start with the remote part of it. Dico, can you share with us some data or insights? Is this, you know, are we kidding ourselves? You mentioned Starlink, you know, those of us here in the room, we work with technology all the time. We are the, I’m generalizing here a little bit, but I assume we’re the lucky ones who during the pandemic stayed at home, kept working. But of course, we know that that was not possible. for so many people. So what is it that is possible with technology in terms of moving work digitally to other parts of the world?

Hisayuki Idekoba: Yeah, so for example, that remote work is, of course, it peaked up to like 7% or 8% of the US job posting had a remote work. And it was originally like 3%-ish. Sorry, it was originally 7%-ish and went up like 14%. Okay. And it’s now, it was originally, sorry, it was originally 3% and went up 14% and now it’s 7%-ish. So it’s almost double compared with the pre-pandemic level. So remote work is here, it’s coming down, but still way higher than pre-pandemic level. But as you said, we realized in the pandemic period, remote work is such a privilege, especially like desk workers, white-collar workers. And 70%, 80%, 75-ish percentage of jobs are some kind of deskless workers, right? Or blue-collar workers. So basically, as you said, AI, and also Amy said that AI can change a lot of jobs but mainly that’s like a desk workers or white-collar workers. And the challenge is, because especially younger generation prefer to be more like a white-collar worker type of jobs, and they tend to not, don’t wanna try to do like outside work or construction workers. They say like it’s a little bit tough job. And sometimes still, I heard that government folks are thinking, oh, we need more jobs of like healthcare worker job. But the reality is, younger generation don’t wanna do this, especially native born workers don’t wanna do that. And as a result, some migrants are covering up. That’s the current situation. And so remote work is very important but still not good enough. So we need to have. some kind of a robotics type of AI work should be done, but it will take time.

Amy Pope: Can I ask a question actually of one of these guys, maybe, because I suspect the answer, but I’d love to test it, which is actually the digitalization is the fastest place where AI is going to swallow up jobs, right? So if I think about young people I would hire for data processing, for analysis of conflicts or whatever, right now I can just ask chat GPT what is the impact of blah blah blah blah, and I get fantastic talking points by the way, which is this the jobs that normally are 20-somethings would do, right? So if that feels like the area of work that is gonna disappear fastest, whereas the area of work around, you know, service, construction, etc. will continue, but that’s my hypothesis. I’d love to

Nacho De Marco: I gave an unfortunate answer because I was asked by a major media outlet what I thought about that, and I said, well, you know, some people say that even the jobs for journalists may go away. That didn’t go very well, but fundamentally I believe in a lot of the, call it office jobs, productivity, at least in the short to mid-term, it’s gonna increase significantly. We’re already seeing that in engineering, software engineering, productivity is just going up, and in the case of software, for example, software just getting better. Users have more demands, and what AI is doing currently is just making everything we produce, not as a company in general, every other company, significantly better. Now you can say, well, that eventually may keep going for five, ten years, hard to tell. Eventually, in 20 years from now, how, you know, office jobs are gonna look like, and it’s a much more complicated answer because AI is changing so quickly that even things we didn’t think were gonna be here today are already here and much more advanced than we thought. So, can we really predict what’s going to happen in 20 years? It’s very hard, but one thing that for sure will help is having governments and companies re-skilling their workforce. That’s definitely going to be key to make sure that no one’s left behind.

David Bach: So this is a very eye-opening, right? So we, again, many of us assume that so much work can be done remotely, but you just share with us some really compelling numbers that that is not the case. So then the impact of technology on this is very much around the opportunity to re-skill. And Erika, you begin to talk about what some of the things are that government and the private sector has to do to create the environment for the attraction of jobs locally, and not just remote work, white-collar work, but manufacturing, advanced services, and of course, if you look at the continent itself, the development of the continent, the infrastructure, the housing, and so on. Talk a little bit about how you think and what you see in your work about what governments and businesses can and must do to create a more favorable environment to attract jobs and create jobs locally. Right. So there are very interesting initiatives, as I mentioned, all over the continent.

Erika Kraemer Mbula: In South Africa, there is the Harambee Youth Initiative that has trained, I think it’s about 600,000 youth, and placed them in good jobs over the years. There’s great initiatives related to IT skills in Rwanda, initiatives in Ghana, and so on, where the figures speak for themselves about what can you do when you train the youth on the right skills. And I think the right skills is the key there. It’s not about training only, it’s about that mismatch that may exist between what the market needs and what the youth is being skilled on. And I think that I wanted to bring a point about the African context, and we are talking about what is happening in businesses, and how to reskill people, and how remote work will change. But let’s remember that 80% of employment in Africa is informal. Yes. And it spans across all sectors, retail, manufacturing, services of all types and so on. We also have subsistence agriculture. So we often talk about structural changes, moving away from low productivity, agricultural activities, into more manufacturing and high-tech services. But perhaps it’s about reskilling and adding skills to those that are already in that employment, and see how can we supplement that experiential expertise that they have, and supplement it with technical skills so they can advance into more productive and better jobs types of activities. And I think that is the key, because when we talk about the opportunities of digital technologies and AI, we often forget about that 80%. How do we connect those two dimensions? And I think that’s the moment that we managed to do that, and there are initiatives that have started to tap into that space. But it’s a work in progress. I think there’s a lot of opportunity there.

David Bach: I would agree. And of course we’ve been speaking about the continent as if it were homogenous, and it isn’t. There are migratory patterns within Africa, again, often driven by jobs or camps outside of Johannesburg and Cape Town of people who are looking for work there. And so your point is well taken about supporting people in the work they’re currently doing and helping them do better. I was recently in India and spoke to a young entrepreneur, a social entrepreneur, who’s using AI to help subsistence farmers actually drive yields by helping them anticipate weather patterns, deal with bugs and so on. There’s so much opportunity there. Can agriculture become a high-tech sector? And if so, what kind of services can be built around that as well? In a decentralized way to strengthen communities. I’d love to see if there’s some questions from the audience that we… can add to the contribution. If you please identify yourself and then state your question. Thank you. Do we have a, I think we’ll have microphones. Otherwise you, no, no, we gotta, there are people watching online, you can’t shout. Yeah.

Audience: Hello, can you hear me? I’m Suin Lee, I’m one of the shop social entrepreneur working in education sector. So in Korea, actually 85% to 90% of population graduated from the university. So 90% of population is getting university degree. But however, in Korea, only 40% of job are so far white collar job. So large number of population just are staying at home, preparing the job exam for the government workers or whatever, and eventually giving up to work outside. And then all those blue collar job, we really needed are actually come from immigrants. So in construction, 90% of the workers there under 60 are from immigrant working. And only older generation who actually trained to move the body are actually working as a blue collar job, but they are also aged. So my question is this. So you are all discussing about all those remote work and immigrants, and the immigrants are feeling the blue collar job and the domestic children are actually all just aiming to the white collar job and some of them are actually giving up. So does it actually give any implication to the education system that push everybody into more intellectual job and expect them to become white collar workers going to the university and actually doesn’t care about the society design in 20 years later?

David Bach: Thank you. So, we talked about skill shortage, now we’re talking about populations where perhaps too many people go to university. Any thoughts on this one? Do you want to jump in?

Nacho De Marco: I want to give a relatively challenging answer, maybe unpopular, but while I definitely understand the problem of developed countries in terms of, you know, the need for blue-collar workers, local blue-collar workers, and I understand that’s a problem in Korea and probably in most of the developed society, it’s not the case for the majority of the population, right? If you go to the biggest countries in the world and some of the most poor countries in the world, that’s not necessarily a topic that bothers them as much. I would argue that potentially the opposite to some degree is happening, where you don’t have a population – Korea is a fantastic country with, you know, 85 to 90 percent, you said, people who have college degrees, but that’s not really representative of the world, you know, we’re what, 8 billion people by now. Arguably, that’s not the case for the vast majority of the population. Of course, pretty much almost everyone here has a great college degree, but that’s not really what you’re going to find pretty much everywhere around the world. And I believe potentially education is what made Korea a fantastic country historically, of course, with, you know, its flaws as every other country, but, you know, Korea invested a significant part of their budget in education in the last decades, and as such, you know, the level of poverty actually decreased significantly. And arguably, in my opinion, well, that’s what most of the world, most of the developing world should do if they want to become the future Korea. And of course, I’m not saying that problem does not need to be solved. Of course, the problem of having people who don’t want to take a blue-collar job. needs to be solved but arguably my view that’s not representative of the most of

Amy Pope: the population. I’m going to give a counter to this because I was in Cote d’Ivoire in Senegal last week and there actually is a similar issue playing out in Cote d’Ivoire because they’ve put a high premium on education. They’re ending up in a situation, I’ve heard the same thing in South Africa actually, end up in a situation with lots of highly trained workers but big big labor gaps in the vocational sector. So there is this very inefficient system of matching talent to national needs and I think it starts, well the first place where we advise a government start is to map it out and identify what are the skills you need, what are the skills you have, what are the skills you’re going to need in the next 10-20 years and how are you preparing your workforce for that. Now I think one of the issues we need to take into account is that increasingly we’re going to look at regional economies. West Africa is a really good example. There’s already a lot of informal migration happening, people working in the informal sector but we don’t yet have sort of regional planning going on to look at the development of the workforce, what skills they have, what skills they need and I think that’s actually a starting place and then thinking about maybe we do want to encourage more kids to go into vocational work. Now the thing about Korea, which actually is a really interesting parallel with Cote d’Ivoire, Cote d’Ivoire was built on the French system. If you all know the French system, it’s extremely rigorous and lots of kids will really struggle to reach the highest levels. So they have a high dropout rate, right, so there’s a ton of pressure and this happens in Korea too, ton of pressure on young people to succeed in these exams. So what if we took some of that pressure out, made some investments in the vocational track and make that sort of good well-paying jobs, right, make that a worth the investment of families. Is there a cultural discourse dimension to this? Have we not created a situation where that kind of work, that vocational work

David Bach: is appreciated in society?

Hisayuki Idekoba: I think there’s one chicken or egg type of problem, which is my father is a roof carpenter, and I hated to be roof carpenter because the salary was not so great. And I just wanted to be rich. That’s why I studied. And I became like, you know, I was trying to be more like software engineer to make money. So again, what I’m saying is like, okay, there’s so many jobs. Okay, let’s retrain these people to be construction worker. They don’t wanna be that. So again, what I’m saying is more like, of course the government, whatever, will try it, but there is some kind of a labor market as a capitalism, right? So what we saw is a lower demand of the computer programmers in the U.S. compared with the pre-pandemic. Probably AI is helping the productivity. And 70%, 80% higher demand for healthcare workers. But still, of course, last five years, the salary increase ratio, these healthcare workers and construction workers are higher than developers, last five years. But still there’s a huge gap. So I think if this capitalism really works well, it’s chicken and egg problem. So there should be re-evaluation of these jobs, which is having high demand. We need to pay more to fill these positions. Very good. Yes. Hi, I’m Shona, one of the Schwab Fellows from South Africa.

Audience: And I just had a question, maybe one of you could put some light on the need for employment for people with disabilities given there are two billion people with disabilities in the world. That is close to one in four moving that way now. How is that being accommodated? And is it valued in terms of the diversity that people bring into the workplace from that perspective? the recruitment and job creation roles, and how is that playing out in terms of the education and skills development being provided in support of that?

David Bach: Thank you. And if you’d like to speak to the question? I will say from an academic and business school perspective, I think the conversation about disability in a labour context is a really, really important and increasingly prominent dimension of the work more broadly on diversity, equity and inclusion. I think we’ve spent a lot of time, appropriately so, on visible diversity and the greater focus on neurodiversity and the role of disability helps surface dimensions of diversity that often colleagues are not aware of, that employers are not aware of, so I can’t give you as precise an answer as I’d like about how that then factors into hiring strategies and skill building strategies, but I think your point is exactly right, that as we’re thinking about the evolution of work, an additional dimension is to account not just for demographic diversity, geographic diversity, racial ethnic diversity, but also diversity in terms of ability and disability.

Audience: I would just say specifically on the knock on effect to families, who then you end up with 70% of the global population affected in some way by disability, because people

David Bach: cannot get work. Thank you so much. It’s hard to believe that the conversation is already coming to an end, and those of us on the days, we can actually see there is a clock ticking back there. And so I’ll do my very best to try to summarize or at least formulate a couple of takeaway points from a very, very engaging and interesting conversation. I’ll state this as a hypothesis. I think the mismatch and attempts to match jobs and people is going to be one of the defining features of our global politics over the next decades. And I think it’s going to be increasingly important on the agenda of businesses and executives. At the end of the day, what is it that businesses do? They bring together people and equip them to achieve things collectively that they could not do on their own. And of course, the World Economic Forum has published again, the future of job reports. And I just encourage all of you interested in this, if you haven’t already read it, to scan the QR code. And I know a number of you have contributed to producing the report. And so, you know, at the very least, we have three ways of thinking about this. Migration is one way of bringing people to jobs. And we know the politics around this. And Amy, I hope that we get quickly to the point where countries compete to attract the best global talent as opposed to closing borders and keeping talent out. A second one, of course, is remote work. And more of that is going to be possible in the future. But at the end of the day, in a world where work tends to be still physical and local and where we don’t want to hollow out communities, we have to bring work to where people are. And that means either creating it locally, indigenously, or more investment. And again, I’d encourage all of us in positions of responsibility to think about that mismatch of people and jobs and to adapt our strategies accordingly to create opportunities where they’re most needed. Thank you so much to this excellent panel and thank you for your questions. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you

Agreement Points

Importance of migration in addressing labor shortages

speakers

– Hisayuki Idekoba
– Amy Pope
– Erika Kraemer Mbula

arguments

Demographic shifts creating labor shortages in developed countries

Migration as a key source of workers for many industries in developed countries

Need to balance migration with retaining skilled workers in developing countries

summary

The speakers agree that migration plays a crucial role in addressing labor shortages in developed countries, but there’s a need to balance this with retaining skilled workers in developing countries.

Need for skills development and education reform

speakers

– Amy Pope
– Erika Kraemer Mbula
– Nacho De Marco

arguments

Need for vocational training alongside university education

Importance of developing local industries and ecosystems in Africa

Importance of reskilling and upskilling workers for changing job markets

summary

The speakers agree on the importance of skills development, education reform, and the need for continuous reskilling to meet changing job market demands.

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers highlight the potential of technology and emerging sectors like the green economy to create new job opportunities and enable global talent matching.

speakers

– Erika Kraemer Mbula
– Nacho De Marco

arguments

Potential of green economy and tech hubs in creating opportunities

Technology enabling remote work and global talent matching

Unexpected Consensus

Impact of AI on white-collar jobs

speakers

– Amy Pope
– Nacho De Marco

arguments

AI and automation affecting mainly white-collar jobs in short term

Potential for technology to increase productivity in various sectors

explanation

Both speakers unexpectedly agree that AI and automation may have a more immediate impact on white-collar jobs, challenging the common perception that automation primarily affects blue-collar work.

Overall Assessment

Summary

The main areas of agreement include the importance of migration in addressing labor shortages, the need for skills development and education reform, and the potential of technology in creating new job opportunities.

Consensus level

There is a moderate level of consensus among the speakers on key issues. This consensus suggests a shared understanding of the complex challenges in the future of work, including the need for balanced migration policies, education reform, and leveraging technology for job creation. However, there are nuanced differences in how these challenges should be addressed, particularly in balancing the needs of developed and developing countries.

Different Viewpoints

Impact of remote work and technology on job markets

speakers

– Hisayuki Idekoba
– Nacho De Marco

arguments

Remote work enabling access to global talent but not applicable to all jobs

Technology enabling remote work and global talent matching

summary

While Idekoba emphasizes the limitations of remote work, particularly for blue-collar jobs, De Marco is more optimistic about technology’s potential to enable remote work and global talent matching across various sectors.

Unexpected Differences

Focus on university education vs. vocational training

speakers

– Amy Pope
– Audience member

arguments

Need for vocational training alongside university education

Mismatch between education systems and labor market needs in some countries

explanation

While not a direct disagreement, the audience member’s point about the oversupply of university graduates in Korea contrasts with the general discussion about skill shortages, highlighting an unexpected complexity in the global labor market dynamics.

Overall Assessment

summary

The main areas of disagreement revolve around the impact of technology on job markets, the balance between migration and local skill retention, and the focus of education systems.

difference_level

The level of disagreement among speakers is moderate. While there are differing perspectives on specific issues, there is a general consensus on the importance of addressing global labor market challenges. These differences in viewpoints highlight the complexity of the issues at hand and the need for nuanced, context-specific solutions to global labor market challenges.

Partial Agreements

Both speakers acknowledge the importance of migration in addressing labor shortages, but Kraemer Mbula emphasizes the need to balance this with retaining skilled workers in developing countries to support local economic growth.

speakers

– Amy Pope
– Erika Kraemer Mbula

arguments

Migration as a key source of workers for many industries in developed countries

Need to balance migration with retaining skilled workers in developing countries

Similar Viewpoints

Both speakers highlight the potential of technology and emerging sectors like the green economy to create new job opportunities and enable global talent matching.

speakers

– Erika Kraemer Mbula
– Nacho De Marco

arguments

Potential of green economy and tech hubs in creating opportunities

Technology enabling remote work and global talent matching

Key Takeaways

Global demographic shifts are creating labor shortages in developed countries, with migration playing a key role in filling jobs

There is a mismatch between education/skills and labor market needs in many countries

Technology is enabling remote work and global talent matching, but is not applicable to all jobs

Developing local industries and ecosystems, especially in Africa, is crucial for creating job opportunities

Reskilling and upskilling workers is essential to adapt to changing job markets and technological advances

The impact of AI and automation is expected to affect mainly white-collar jobs in the short term

Resolutions and Action Items

Governments and businesses should invest in skills development programs tailored to market needs

Countries should consider regional planning for workforce development, especially in areas like West Africa

Businesses should explore opportunities for remote work and leveraging global talent

Unresolved Issues

How to balance migration needs of developed countries with retaining skilled workers in developing countries

How to address the cultural stigma around vocational and blue-collar jobs in some societies

How to effectively integrate people with disabilities into the workforce on a global scale

Long-term impact of AI and automation on various job sectors

Suggested Compromises

Developing remote work opportunities to allow talent to contribute globally while remaining in their home countries

Balancing university education with increased investment in vocational training and revaluing blue-collar jobs

Using technology to supplement rather than replace existing jobs and skills, especially in informal economies

90% of of this workers are immigrants and when we think about each segments 68% of farmers are immigrants and agriculture jobs and 30% of hospitality workers and 30% of factory workers are immigrants and 20 25% of healthcare workers are immigrants

speaker

Hisayuki Idekoba

reason

This comment provides striking data on the extent to which immigrants fill key jobs in developed countries, challenging assumptions about the role of immigration in labor markets.

impact

It shifted the conversation to focus on the critical importance of immigration for filling labor shortages in developed economies, leading to further discussion of migration policies and demographic trends.

What we’re also seeing, though, is that there are huge pressures on communities, lack of economic opportunity. You look at the population of Africa, which has the highest growing number of young people, but not the same kind of growth in terms of job opportunities.

speaker

Amy Pope

reason

This comment highlights the mismatch between population growth and job creation in Africa, introducing a key challenge in global labor markets.

impact

It prompted further discussion on how to leverage Africa’s young population as a global talent hub and the need for job creation strategies on the continent.

We would like to prepare young Africans to serve the needs for talent in other parts of the world, but also to create opportunities where they are. And I think that is the key. And perhaps those two objectives can be achieved simultaneously due to the opportunities that are open through remote work.

speaker

Erika Kraemer Mbula

reason

This comment proposes a balanced approach to addressing Africa’s employment challenges, considering both local and global opportunities.

impact

It led to a deeper discussion on strategies for skill development in Africa and how to balance local economic development with participation in the global labor market.

Technology has actually made education significantly easier. Significantly easier. AI particularly, for generating content for training, it’s extraordinary, right?

speaker

Nacho De Marco

reason

This comment introduces the potential of AI and technology to revolutionize education and skills training.

impact

It shifted the conversation to focus on how technology can be leveraged to address skills gaps and improve access to education globally.

But let’s remember that 80% of employment in Africa is informal. Yes. And it spans across all sectors, retail, manufacturing, services of all types and so on. We also have subsistence agriculture.

speaker

Erika Kraemer Mbula

reason

This comment brings attention to the often-overlooked informal sector in Africa, adding complexity to the discussion on job creation and skills development.

impact

It broadened the conversation to consider how to improve and formalize existing informal employment, rather than focusing solely on creating new formal sector jobs.

Overall Assessment

These key comments shaped the discussion by highlighting the complex interplay between migration, technology, education, and local economic development in addressing global labor market challenges. They moved the conversation from a focus on developed countries’ labor needs to a more holistic view that considered the perspectives and needs of developing countries, particularly in Africa. The discussion evolved to explore multifaceted solutions that balance local development with global labor mobility, leveraging technology for education and remote work while also addressing the realities of informal economies.

How can countries effectively balance attracting global talent through migration while addressing domestic concerns like housing and social services?

speaker

Amy Pope

explanation

This is important to develop sustainable migration policies that meet labor needs without causing social backlash.

How can African countries invest in skills development and create an ecosystem to retain talent while still supporting global labor markets?

speaker

Erika Kraemer Mbula

explanation

This is crucial for Africa to leverage its young population without experiencing a ‘brain drain’ effect.

What are effective strategies for reskilling and upskilling the 80% of African workers in the informal sector?

speaker

Erika Kraemer Mbula

explanation

This is vital for improving productivity and quality of life for a large portion of Africa’s workforce.

How can AI and technology be leveraged to improve productivity in agriculture and other traditionally low-tech sectors?

speaker

David Bach

explanation

This could provide opportunities for economic growth and job creation in developing regions.

How can education systems be redesigned to better balance the development of white-collar and blue-collar skills based on societal needs?

speaker

Audience member (Suin Lee)

explanation

This is important to address mismatches between education outcomes and labor market demands.

How can regional economic planning be implemented to better match skills and labor needs across countries?

speaker

Amy Pope

explanation

This approach could lead to more efficient labor markets and economic development on a regional scale.

How can employment opportunities for people with disabilities be improved and better integrated into broader workforce development strategies?

speaker

Audience member (Shona)

explanation

This is crucial for promoting inclusive economic growth and leveraging the skills of a significant portion of the global population.