Take a look at which jobs are about to disappear
The World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report for 2025 offers some interesting insights into the future of work in the next five years. It’s going to be a wild few years.
It’s no surprise that the biggest demand is going to be for tech skills: big data specialists, fintech engineers, AI and machine learning experts and software generally. The imminent swarm of autonomous vehicles (for South Africans, this is definitely not going to happen) is also going to require huge new skills development. What’s also interesting is the need for truck drivers. They’re not going away.
Now look at the following table and see which jobs are most likely to disappear:
- Postal service workers
- Bank tellers
- Data entry clerks (AI is going to swallow these functions)
- Cashier and ticket clerks
- Printing services
- Accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll clerks (ditto: AI is coming for you)
- Transport attendants
Source: World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2025
The chart below from the same WEF report explains the tech trends driving business transformation. Again, no surprise that AI and information technology is the primary driver of business change, followed by robots and autonomous systems, energy storage, and new materials and composites.
The WEF report is a splash of cold water for SA. The global unemployment rate stands at 4.9% - the lowest since 1991. The unemployment rate for low-income countries is 5.3%.
South Africa’s unemployment rate is 32.1% - six times the average for low-income countries.
We are such an outlier in global terms that one would imagine it prompts an urgent, high-level rethink about the way we do things. That this horrendous unemployment rate does not receive any serious consideration from policymakers, other than as a weapon with which to beat political opponents, is rather staggering.
The lesson is clear: if you are in the column of declining jobs, it’s time to start coding!
