Employers surveyed by the World Economic Forum expect 59 out of every 100 workers to need training by 2030, including 19 who could learn new skills and move into different roles within their organizations. The forecast highlights a business challenge: developing people for changing work takes more than buying courses.
The figures come from the Future of Jobs Report 2025, based on responses from more than 1,000 leading employers representing over 14 million workers across 55 economies. They describe employers’ expectations, rather than completed career transitions or a representative survey of every worker.
Of the hypothetical 100 workers, employers expected 29 to receive training within their current roles and 19 to be trained and redeployed elsewhere in the organization. Another 11 would be unlikely to receive the training they needed.
The distinction matters. Helping somebody use a new tool in an existing job is different from preparing them for another occupation. Both require investment, but a change of role also needs a suitable destination.
What is reskilling?
Reskilling means learning new skills to perform different tasks or a different job. The OECD distinguishes it from upskilling, which involves learning additional skills to perform an existing job better.
A financial analyst learning to use new forecasting software is being upskilled. An analyst retraining for a cybersecurity role is being reskilled. These are illustrative examples, and the boundary becomes less clear when an occupation changes substantially while its job title stays the same.
Neither process necessarily starts from scratch. Industry knowledge, communication, problem-solving and experience with customers may remain useful in a new role. Training can concentrate on the capabilities the worker still needs.
Recruitment cannot create a supply of skills
In the WEF survey, 63% of employers identified skills gaps as a major barrier to business transformation over 2025 to 2030. A skills gap means workers lack capabilities a business needs, which is not the same as a general shortage of people seeking employment.
Our earlier coverage of skills shortages alongside graduate unemployment explains how qualifications, experience and geography can leave employers and jobseekers struggling at the same time.
Hiring an experienced specialist may be the right answer for an individual company. Across an industry, however, employers competing for the same limited pool of workers mainly redistribute existing expertise. Training offers a way to expand that pool.
Existing employees also know their employer’s products, customers and procedures. Retraining them may preserve knowledge that a new recruit would need time to acquire.
The financial comparison still depends on the role. Lengthy training, supervision and time away from productive work can make a transition expensive. Employers must weigh those costs against recruitment delays, wages for scarce specialists and the time needed to bring an outsider up to speed.
AI changes tasks as well as occupations
The International Labour Organization’s 2025 assessment estimated that one in four workers worldwide was in an occupation with some exposure to generative artificial intelligence, which creates content such as text, images and computer code.
Exposure measures the potential for technology to affect tasks. It does not measure actual layoffs. The ILO judged that continued demand for human input made transformation more likely than complete replacement for most jobs.
For employers, that makes the design of the remaining work important. If software handles routine drafting or information processing, employees may need stronger skills in checking outputs, handling exceptions or making decisions. Some changes call for upskilling; others may create a need to move people between roles.
The pressure extends beyond AI. The OECD’s analysis of small businesses identifies the digital and green transitions as drivers of changing skill requirements. New energy systems, production processes and environmental obligations can require additional technical and management capabilities.
A worker’s existing experience may provide a useful foundation. It does not remove the need for formal qualifications, supervised practice or safety training where an occupation requires them.
Training needs a route into work
A reskilling program has a practical problem to solve: which work could this person realistically move into, and what is missing from their current capabilities?
Internal mobility, meaning movement between jobs within an organization, can connect training to a vacancy. Employers can identify suitable roles, assess transferable skills and arrange supervised assignments before asking someone to make a permanent move.
Workers also need clear information about the proposed job, pay, qualification requirements and prospects. A technically possible transition may not suit their interests or circumstances.
Course completion alone cannot establish success. Whether participants enter relevant work, perform it competently and remain in it provides a more useful test. Employers should also distinguish a genuine opportunity from training for a position that has not been approved or funded.
Time and access can limit retraining
The OECD’s Trends in Adult Learning report, published in 2025 using the 2023 Survey of Adult Skills, found participation stagnating or declining in many countries. Work and family commitments, along with cost, were prominent obstacles for adults wanting to learn.
An online course may be easy to distribute, but completing it still takes time. Protected learning hours and access to someone who can answer questions may matter as much as the course fee.
Small businesses face particular constraints. The OECD notes that they have fewer employees available to cover someone attending training and may lack a dedicated human resources team. Losing a trained worker to another employer can also weaken the return on their investment.
Access is uneven within the workforce too. OECD Skills Outlook 2025 found training in advanced digital skills, project management and other capabilities associated with broader career opportunities concentrated among adults with more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds.
Job-specific and compliance training remains valuable, but it may offer little preparation for moving into another occupation. Giving workers access to a learning platform will not, by itself, close that difference.
For governments and employers, the unresolved issue is who pays for the longer transition: the instruction, the time away from work and any period before the worker becomes fully productive. A retraining place is easier to offer than a financially workable route into a new job.
