Future of Jobs Report: How global hiring fared amid the pandemic

October 29, 2020

The coronavirus pandemic has hit the labour market globally. Though there has been an immediate shift to a socially-distanced, digital world, the impact to the labour market has played out differently across countries, industries and populations. According to the the Future of Jobs Report, hiring dropped globally at the height of the crisis. Although, there was an initial rebound in hiring over the summer, now their is an early rebound slowing, and the pace of recovery levelling out as many countries remain far below where they were a year ago.

This latest research looks specifically at how people transitioned into them and the analysis is grounded in our understanding of skills, and the clusters of skills that create bridges between jobs.

Key findings of the Future of Jobs Report 2020

First, we must tackle unemployment and cope with the volatile cycles of economic recovery.
We must make pressing decisions about how to get people back to work in resilient, sustainable jobs.
Reskilling efforts have become more urgent than ever as we settle into our new normal.
The research reveals that it is possible to help move workers into the jobs of tomorrow, even if they don’t have a complete skills match.
China and France are leading hiring recovery, while the US, Australia and UK are lagging behind.
Some industries have also proved more resilient in adapting to socially-distanced operations.
The pandemic did impact every industry, even the more stable software and finance.
The global labour market can absorb approximately 150 million new tech jobs during the next five years.
Many traditional jobs will become “tech-enabled jobs” that will require employees to fill them to have more digital skills.
Workers who have lost jobs need to build new (largely digital) skills to find emerging jobs that are on the rise; employers need to upskill current employees with tech skills to navigate the virtual workplace; governments will have to provide skilling programmes to ensure that their workforce is ready for a digital future.
The majority of transitions into jobs of tomorrow come from non-emerging jobs, proving that it is not only possible to move into an emerging job, but actually very common. Some of the emerging job clusters show a higher level of openness for people coming from other occupations: more than 70% of the people moving into the clusters Product Development and Data and AI come from different job families; but Engineering and People and Culture, are significantly lower with 19 percent and 26 percent respectively. These types of jobs are fairly established and the labour market has had time to build talent pipelines for these roles, whereas Product Development and Data and AI are newer, constantly-evolving pockets within the labour market.
Emerging jobs in Cloud Computing and Data and AI present greater opportunities for people to pivot into professions without making significant changes to the skills they already have.
Emerging jobs in Engineering and HR, are more closed to unconventional transitions and require higher skills overlap. The insights show that transitions into emerging jobs are more accessible and can help us understand where to target reskilling investments that will have the highest impact for immediate and long-term career transitions.
Targeting investments to help workers build the right skills is critical but it is even more important that we ensure we are not leaving underrepresented groups behind.
On LinkedIn, women’s share of new hires took a hit globally, dropping from 46.94 percent in February to 43.7 percent low in April.