Importantly, this analysis only compares the 2025 and 2030 proportions of total task delivery attributable to human employees, technology or collaboration between the two, respectively, and does not consider the potential change in the absolute amount of work tasks (output) getting done. In other words, both machines and humans might be significantly more productive in 2030 – performing more or higher value tasks in the same or less amount of time than it would have taken them to do so in 2025 – so any concern about humans “running out of things to do” due to automation would be misplaced. However, a potentially more complex question raised by these projections concerns the on-going share of total economic value creation participated in by human workers: If an increasing amount of a firm’s total output and income is derived from advanced machines and proprietary algorithms, to what extent will human workers be able to share in this prosperity?33 It is in this context that the relevance of the third category/approach, human- machine collaboration (or “augmentation”) should be highlighted: technology could be designed and developed in a way that complements and enhances, rather than displaces, human work; and, as discussed further in the next chapter (Box 3.1), talent development, reskilling and upskilling strategies may be designed and delivered in a way to enable and optimize human-machine collaboration.34 It is the investment decisions and policy choices made today that will shape these outcomes in the coming years.35 At an industry level, while all sectors are expected to see a reduction in the proportion of work tasks performed by humans alone by 2030, they differ in the share of this reduction that is projected to be attributable to automation versus augmentation and human-machine collaboration (Figure 2.9). Insurance and Pensions Management and Telecommunications are leading the automation trend – with more than 95% of human standalone task share reduction in both sectors expected to derive from deeper automation. By contrast, nearly half of the proportional reduction in work tasks done by humans alone in the Medical and Healthcare Services and Government and Public sectors are instead expected to be driven by increased augmentation and human-machine collaboration. In four sectors – Oil and Gas, Chemicals and Advanced Materials, Financial Services and Capital Markets, and Electronics – automation is projected not only to reduce the proportion of total work tasks predominantly done today standalone by humans, but even to reduce the share of total work tasks currently delivered through human- machine collaboration (resulting in calculated “automation shares” of more than 100%, as depicted in Figure 2.9). 47% 33%Automation 81.5% 0 Now 100 75 50 25 By 2030Expected shift in the human share of work task delivery in total ﬁrm output driven by automation versus augmentation, 2025-2030, global averageFIGURE 2.8 Source World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Survey 2024.Change in proportion of human-performed tasks attributable to increasing automation. Future of Jobs Report 2025 27