The Asian labor market is in the midst of a fundamental transformation. Advanced economies, as well as some emerging ones, are aging very rapidly, while high youth unemployment persists in developing economies, where population growth has been robust and is expected to continue to be so. Moreover, close to half of the current jobs may disappear due to advancements in robotics and AI (artificial intelligence), while new jobs will also emerge.

These two factors — an aging population and advances in robotics and AI — will trigger changes both in the type of skills that will be needed and where they will come from. Specifically, as new jobs that require new skills emerge, having "just-in-time" access to those skills will become increasingly important because it takes time for educational and training institutions to adapt their curricula, and produce people with new sets of skills.

The Global Survey by the Global Agenda Council on the Future of Jobs at the World Economic Forum is intended to identify the drivers of changing trends and disruptions affecting work, their implications for skills, and the adaptation strategies of global firms. Such firms, however, cannot resolve the impending skills mismatches on their own.