Just decades ago, the internet was an entirely new concept, but it’s become second nature for billions of people and is now embedded into daily life across the world. While the internet is old news, there are recent technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), and the cloud that have gone from niche, specialized roles in the global economy to the mainstream. This rapid and widespread digitalization has changed the nature of work, and as a result, digital skills are now regarded as essential for the modern workforce — across Europe and the U.S., job requirements for digital skills have gone up by 50%.
While this transformation has been underway for decades, the pandemic accelerated it. Not only did the crisis change how businesses operate and the way we work, but it also influenced people’s reliance on technology. Individuals and businesses were suddenly dependent on the internet, their smartphones, and their mobile applications for critical daily activities like work, shopping, and communication with loved ones. A 2022 report from PPI found that the App Economy became an increasingly indispensable part of the U.S. economy during the pandemic. Existing mobile applications were able to respond to soaring demand without significant outages and app developers were also able to quickly create new apps to meet the human and economic needs.
Additionally, this year’s World Economic Forum Jobs report — which lifted up perspectives from 803 companies that collectively employ more than 11.3 million workers across 27 industry clusters and 45 economies across the world — found that technology adoption will remain a key driver of business transformation for the next five years, with over 85% of organizations identifying that increased adoption of new and frontier technologies and broadening digital access will be priorities for their organization. Eighty-six percent of companies surveyed also stated that digital platforms and apps are the technologies most likely be incorporated into their operations in the next five years.
It’s clear the reliance on technology from individuals and business is not going away anytime soon and will continue to grow as emerging technologies and solutions are developed and adopted. To keep pace with this demand — while also ensuring business has the skilled talent to remain competitive — digital and tech-related skills will be increasingly necessary for workers to succeed in the global labor market.
While demand for digital skills is growing, unfortunately supply is lower than it needs to be. Workforce shortages persist across the tech industry with employers struggling to find skilled talent that is prepared for digital roles. And this gap continues to widen. A 2021 Rand Corporation report found that the global digital skills gap was widening due to the following factors: tech talent outpacing an already short supply (in fact, 54% of American workers believe technology will advance faster than workforce skills); high costs and disorganized approaches to traditional education that increase barriers to learning; access to digital infrastructure and skills limited by socio-economic status (76% of global workers don’t feel they have the resources needed to learn digital skills).
These findings highlight the barriers confronting workers who want to acquire digital skills. The report also estimates that because of digital skills gaps, 14 of the G20 countries could miss out on $11.5 trillion in cumulative GDP growth. Policymakers around the world need to tackle this problem, both to ensure their industries and businesses can keep pace with the rate and scale of technological innovation, but also to ensure current and future workers will have more opportunities to develop the skills needed to succeed in changing labor markets.