Job landscape to shift further next year, so here’s what you need to know

Roles are rapidly shifting across multiple industries and company leaders will need to keep up in 2024, Inc. reports. 

Changes in demand and technology have created and killed jobs throughout history, Carl Benedikt Frey, a professor of AI and work at the University of Oxford Internet Institute, tells Inc.

But now, there’s more movement in the labor market than usual, according to a McKinsey report released earlier this year. From 2019 to 2022, the labor market experienced 50% more occupational shifts than in the prior three-year period.

Here’s what leaders and their teams might expect to see in the evolving job landscape in the year ahead, and how they can best prepare to meet those changes:

New technology will make some roles redundant. According to this year’s Future of Jobs Report from the World Economic Forum, there could be 26 million fewer jobs in bookkeeping, executive secretarial work, administration, and similar areas of work by 2027.

Employers should think in terms of tasks, not jobs. While entire occupations may not become obsolete in 2024, parts of roles might. The McKinsey report estimates that, because of AI and other factors, “activities that account for up to 30% of hours currently worked across the U.S. economy could be automated” by 2030.

Meanwhile, new roles will grow. The WEF identified “AI and machine learning specialists” as the fastest-growing job in this year’s report. Sustainability is also driving job growth, with roles like sustainability specialists and renewable energy engineers gaining traction. Read the full story from Inc.