Half of the world’s global Gen Z and Millennials population say they live pay cheque to pay cheque. According to Deloitte’s recent survey, approximately 50 per cent of the Gen Zs and four in 10 Millennials said they felt stressed all or most of the time. They cited the cost of living as their top societal concern in addition to having a good work-life balance, which was a key consideration when choosing a new employer.

Why? Because working and having a job are central to the identity of 49 per cent of Gen Zs and 62 per cent of Millennials. Interestingly, though, they do not want to work longer. They want to work smarter. Therefore, they find interest in part-time jobs and prefer an intense four-day workweek versus a five-day one. Added to these criteria are their needs for mental health days off and corporations aligning with sustainable and humane activities.

Yet, as these generations ideate on their career goals, the global future of jobs in various fields will pose a challenge, especially for those in developing economies that are not preparing their youth population for what will exist.

The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2023, which investigates trends across 803 companies that, if combined, employed more than 11.3 million workers across 27 industry clusters and 45 economies worldwide, paints an urgent case for job market retooling.

What is clear from the findings is that technology adoption will remain a key driver of business transformation over the next five years, with 85 per cent of organisations saying that they will use new and frontier technologies and broadening digital access to drive transformation in their organisations. Ultimately, the utilisation of technology is expected to drive job growth in more than 50 per cent of the companies surveyed.

For example, big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI) are all priorities for these companies, with more than 75 per cent looking to embrace these technologies within the next five years. Moreover, 86 per cent of companies expect to incorporate digitalisation of commerce and trade into their operations for the same period, while 81 per cent will add education and workforce technologies by 2027.

Already the fastest-growing roles today are technology-related roles, with AI and machine learning specialists being at the top of the list of fast-growing jobs, followed by sustainability specialists, business intelligence analysts and information security analysts, renewable energy engineers, and solar energy installation and system engineers as economies shift towards renewable energy.

Education, agriculture, digital commerce, and trade will also be large-scale drivers of job growth. Jobs in the education industry will increase by approximately 10 per cent leading to 3 million additional jobs for vocational education teachers and university and higher education teachers. Jobs for agricultural professionals, especially agricultural equipment operators, will also grow 30 per cent. E-Commerce, digital transformation, and digital marketing and strategy specialists will also be in demand. Therefore, training workers to embrace and handle AI and big data ranks third among company skills-training priorities in the next five years and will be prioritised by nearly half of the companies surveyed.

So what will this mean for job security in the future? It means some jobs will cease, as the report has already placed them in decline. Organisations anticipate 26 million fewer jobs by 2027, driven mainly by digitalisation, automation, and AI.

Like the Encyclopedia Brittanica salespeople, who perhaps never thought they would become obsolete by being replaced by Google, people must ask themselves where these modern job trends leave them. Will their field of work exist, or will they be replaced?

Jobs already in rapid decline are now in clerical or secretarial positions, in addition to bank tellers and related clerks; postal service clerks, cashiers, ticket clerks, data entry clerks, data, accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll clerks; and administrative and executive secretaries.

As a Member of Parliament, I often come across young people with university degrees who need work, but they cannot find a job and want to leave in hopes of a better life abroad.

In discussions with them I learn that they have primarily studied in areas with minimal positions in the marketplace. No one advised or counselled them about what they could expect after graduation. Most have business administration, social work, or early childhood education degrees.

According to the World Economic Forum’s latest annual Human Capital Index, this reality will get more intense as time passes, especially with the rapid advances in robotics, driverless transport, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, advanced materials, and genomics.

One estimate suggests that 65 per cent of children entering primary school today will work in new job types that are not on the horizon yet. Therefore, we need an urgent re-evaluation of how we plan the future for our youth, educating them, and preparing them to be competitive in the global job market. We should not have young people graduating without access to jobs that will exist in the future. Worse, our prime minister should not signal that Jamaica may have to import labour.

For our youth to access the future world of work we should begin with our schools at all levels, accelerating our children’s ability to comprehend, synthesise, and critically analyse information to solve problems with urgent solutions.

Companies say that analytical and creative thinking are considered the most important skills for workers in 2023. So are resilience, flexibility, agility, motivation, and self-awareness, and the importance of workers’ ability to adapt to disrupted workplaces.

Also, we must forecast which fields will exist and reorient our economy to create and incentivise those industries to have the best global competitive advantage. This means that our government policies should synergise with the private sector to develop these sectors and our universities and vocational institutions focussing on training young people to work in them.

I am deeply concerned with our lack of foresight to pivot and take risks. We have kept the focus on finessing old traditional sectors for far too long without real diversification or innovation. This approach has not only held back our youth’s development but also kept our economy stagnated and stifled our productivity as a nation.

Lisa Hanna is Member of Parliament for St Ann South Eastern, People’s National Party spokesperson on foreign affairs and foreign trade, and a former Cabinet member.