I re-read the WEF paper Accelerating Workforce Reskilling for the Fourth Industrial Revolution over the weekend (yes, I know how to have a good time). Published in 2017, I wanted to see how accurate its projections had been in its pathways for change. Written before the pandemic and global lockdowns, it appeared, at first view, to be pretty accurate. Referencing topics such as blended learning approaches and reskilling seemed to be correct.

What really stood out was how vague it was. It lacked detail in how these things might happen and the predictions were very general.

Why did I read it? The 2025 Future of Jobs report by the WEF was published a couple of weeks ago and I’ve seen at least a dozen references to how it will ‘change work’. It predicts a net gain of 78m jobs by 2030; previous reports have overestimated jobs growth with assumptions about GenAI falling short.

By all means use these reports to help shape your thinking but take care to make sure you’re synthesizing all the data available before you place eggs in these prediction shaped baskets.