The 5 fastest-growing skills you might need for job success — and the ones that may not help
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- Employers see AI and cybersecurity skills as some of the most important in the next few years.
- Employers expect nearly 40% of skills to change or become irrelevant by 2030, a WEF report said.
- Big data specialists and fintech engineers will likely be the fastest-growing jobs.
Employers say AI and big data proficiency are now some of the most important skills for job seekers in the next few years, according to the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report.
The sweeping survey found that employers believe various tech-related skills will grow in importance the fastest, while manual dexterity and reading will decline this year. This highlights the rapid workplace transformation happening across industries.
Over 1,000 employers representing more than 14 million employees worldwide were surveyed for the report, which previews the job landscape for 2025 to 2030.
AI and big data, networks and cybersecurity, and technological literacy ranked as the three skills growing the fastest in importance. The AI boom has not only transformed Silicon Valley but also reshaped once-mundane tasks across industries, from legal research to code writing.
A Google Cloud director previously told Business Insider that cybersecurity is one of the most broadly relevant skills, with industries from agriculture to financial services seeking professionals in the space. Yet demand isn't being met, he said, and the field is here to stay.
Survey respondents said they don't anticipate that tech skills alone will be in demand. Creative thinking and resilience ranked No. 4 and No. 5, respectively, on the list of skills growing the fastest in importance.
On the flip side, employers surveyed said they believe manual dexterity, endurance, and precision will decrease in importance. Reading, writing, and mathematics also saw a small dip among respondents. Overall, employees globally can expect that nearly 40% of their current skills will drastically change or become irrelevant by 2030, according to the survey.
Compared to the World Economic Forum's previous reports, tech skills saw the biggest jump in projected importance, with AI spiking in anticipated value across almost all agencies. Though the tech industry has hit a hiring slump in recent years, tech and non-tech companies alike are eager to hire AI roles, BI previously reported.
The fastest-growing jobs in the next five years will likely be big data specialists and fintech engineers, while clerical and secretarial workers will continue to decline, according to the report. With job growth slowing and unemployed Americans staying out of work longer, economists previously told BI that 2025 will prove challenging for job hunters overall, especially those in white-collar industries.