The profound effects of technological progress on the world economy, taken together with globalization and demographic change, have led to a pressing societal problem: how to equip people with the skills they need to participate in the economy – now and in the future. Governments, businesses and educational institutions are not currently helping people acquire the skills they need to succeed. Millions of people are already being left behind because of volatile market conditions,the effects of COVID-19, or because they work in industries that are being replaced by new sectors.All of this highlights a critical need for reskilling and upskilling. There is an enormous opportunity to reconfigure the world of work at this critical juncture and embark on an upskilling revolution that will give people across the world the ability to participate fully in the future of work, whatever that might be.

The COVID-19 pandemic and its effect on ways of working and the global economy have further exposed the inadequacies of our current economic structures to address this growing mismatch between people’s current skills and those needed for the jobs at the heart of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

This report is a call to action for wide-scale upskilling. It provides a quantitative analysis of the impact upskilling can have on economic growth.Gross domestic product (GDP) has been used for this analysis because it is the most widely used economic measure today. But GDP does not tell the full story. That is why the research is complemented with a qualitative analysis that looks at the need for new economic thinking underpinned by the development of good jobs –work that is safe, paid fairly, reasonably secure and motivating, and that emphasizes the uniquely human skills and traits of workers, thus delivering higher levels of productivity.