The Future of Jobs & Your Career
- Maria Vitoratos
- Aug 5
- 4 min read
Reading the World Economic Forum's (WEF) 2025 "The Future of Jobs" report, I found myself questioning the career guidance offered to youth during their impressionable years in high school and the further impacts poor guidance creates for university students. I read the report as an academic and decided to use the findings to audit my career guidance program for youth.
My conclusions? For starters, the report anchored the unwavering necessity for educators and parents to re-script the career guidance narrative for youth. This short article will discuss the three learnings I gained from the report that will shape my 2025 career guidance initiatives for students this year and encourage you to consider them for your students/teens: time frame, adaptability, and long-life learners.
First, the report highlighted and normalized the time frame of five years. The five-year mark will help me remind my students that one doesn't need to map out a 30-ish-year journey, just the next five-year strategy. Too often, young people are made to believe that the career choice they make at 17 years old will influence their future success. However, students are not equipped to make choices because their career guidance is limited to university degree discussions and whether or not certain grades will allow them entryway to said degree.
The WEF (2025) report highlights transformative trends such as technological advancements, climate change, demographic shifts transforming global economies, aging society shifts, and geo-economic and geo-political impacts on work trends. Therefore, the time is now to stop talking about degrees in isolation with teenagers, making them believe that the undergraduate degree will be the key to future success. Conversations about careers should be shifted towards discussions about the transformative trends predicted by the report, and students should be given real-world scenarios to help them learn for life and not for a degree.
Second, I compared previous WEF reports with the newest 2025 edition to affirm further that resilience, adaptability, and solution-finding skills will become a young person's key to future survival at work. The WEF (2025) report stated that 60% of employers are expected to transform their businesses by 2030. Therefore, with technology advancing at a surreal pace, the impacts on jobs will see some declining and others growing. However, it's not just about knowing tech-related skills under one's belt; it's more about learning how to persevere with grit with technological and labour market advancements whilst not falling prey to the fear of one's job declining and unemployment looming. In my experience, working with professionals who have experienced unexpected unemployment is often not just about the job; it's usually about one's identity and the fear of falling behind in a fast-paced, tech-impacted work world. Therefore, I urge students to understand that their struggles of life at high school or university are not about friendship groups, degrees, or grades; their struggles are essential learning opportunities preparing young people for the resilience and solution-finding skills they will need to have in the turbulent world of work.
Third, if one gains anything from the report, let it be that learning is not limited to high school and university; learning is a survival tool as jobs are impacted by technology, cost-cutting, and employers wanting fast and cheap labour. Therefore, the WEF (2025) report is not only a great read but also insightful and an excellent resource to help teenagers begin conversations about upskills and mandatory entry-level education they should consider as they begin to make career decisions. However, learning is never a degree at work; it's a skill-builder, and learning is fast becoming a requirement and not an exception in today's competitive labour market. Students should be given realistic information about how learning is not optional and that what one chooses to learn is not about getting a degree but becoming employable. For example, the WEF (2025) report highlighted that workers can expect several skills to be outdated by 2030, making employers face ongoing skills gaps as the most significant barrier to their business's transformation. Additionally, I urge you to tell students that 70% of employers will hire staff with the new required skills by 2030; are teens in your classroom learning about the skills employers will require? (WEF, 2025).
My WEF (2025) summary was written with the urgency of better career guidance for young people in mind. However, as I conclude this short blog post, I am reflecting on the urgency for career guidance for mid-career and aging career-transitioners. My understanding of the report highlights the importance of career guidance in building students' career strategies beyond the 'degree discussion.' I'm not here to help you reflect and re-design your career strategy by making informed choices.
Maria Vitoratos is a Career Educator, Researcher, and Practitioner committed to advancing equitable career services across the UAE. She currently supports schools, universities, and individuals in developing impactful, inclusive career education programs. Get in touch with Maria to explore how she can support your career education goals.
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