A growing and ageing global population looks to exacerbate existing issues with social mobility, human capital development and societal resilience. Meanwhile, geopolitical tensions are amplifying the need to find alternate energy sources amid the already urgent need to transform into a more sustainable economy.
More social jobs, those in education, healthcare and care, can help address social mobility, human capital and resilience issues. Similarly, more green jobs are essential for enabling an environmental transition.
The World Economic Forum, in collaboration with Accenture, is providing foresight to leaders on which jobs can help drive societal and environmental change. By working together to create these social and green jobs, businesses, governments and unions will drive better job creation, better transition support for workers and a more inclusive and sustainable global economy and society.
The World Economic Forum’s Jobs of Tomorrow: Social and Green Jobs for Building Inclusive and Sustainable Economies, in collaboration with Accenture, sought to understand the social and green jobs required to transition to a more socially inclusive and environmentally sustainable world.
We did this by comparing how many social and green jobs exist across ten countries (Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Japan, South Africa, Spain, the UK and the USA) relative to four benchmark countries (Denmark, Norway and Sweden – with Finland included only for social jobs) that are top performers in the World Economic Forum’s Global Social Mobility Index and Energy Transition Index and projected forward to 2030. We called the gap between each country and the benchmark countries the unmet need for jobs to help address social mobility and environmental gaps.
The insights from assessing the unmet need across these 10 countries can help establish a better future for workers and for society.
Here’s what we found:
Social Jobs represent 11% of the total workforce in the 10 countries we studied:
The green workforce is currently far smaller than the social workforce – in the countries we studied, just 1% of total employment meets our definition of green jobs – yet these jobs are essential for an environmental transition.
The insights from the World Economic Forum’s Jobs of Tomorrow: Social and Green Employment to Enable Inclusive and Sustainable Economies by 2030, in collaboration with Accenture, highlight the types of social and green jobs the world needs to provide an inclusive and sustainable society and economy.
We can only achieve this through a multistakeholder approach. Businesses, governments and unions must align on a new vision for a better future of work. They must commit to boosting foresight on labour market trends to prepare for the future, identify investments in key sectors that lead to good job creation and support high job quality, fair wages and dynamic job transitions.