The fact that Future of Jobs Survey respondents predominantly evaluate talent availability challenges as industry-level issues points to potentially untapped opportunities for industry stakeholders to collaborate and implement customized intra- industry or cross-industry solutions. However, employers across industries often exhibit different preferences over workforce strategies. Reaching close to a consensus view, upskilling is selected as the top workforce strategy in 20 industries and ranks second in the remaining two: Electronics and Insurance and Pensions Management. Oil and Gas (96%) and Telecommunications (96%) are the industries most committed to upskilling, while a still significant 73% of Education and Training industry employers plan to focus on this strategy. There exist more notable industry differences with regard to anticipated use of technologies to either fully automate processes and tasks or complement and augment the human workforce, as shown in Figure 5.2. While most industries aim to pursue a balance of both automation-focused and augmentation-focused workforce strategies over the 2025-2030 period, 87% of respondents in Electronics expect to focus on automating tasks, whereas only 48% plan to focus on workforce augmentation. Industries including Insurance and Pensions as well as Telecommunications exhibit a similar automation-to-augmentation gap. By contrast, sectors such as Healthcare, Agriculture, and Government report a higher preference for augmentation over automation. Additionally, while hiring staff with new skills to meet emerging business needs features among the top three workforce strategies in 17 out of 22 sectors – possibly precipitating strong intra- and inter-industry competition over talent over the next five years – upskilling and transitioning existing staff from declining to growing job roles appears as an untapped opportunity: only the Automotive and Aerospace, Electronics, and Real Estate sectors currently aim to prioritize such job transitions as one of their top three workforce strategies by 2030. Accelerate automation of processes and tasksComplement and augment workforce with new technologies80 75 70 65 60 55 50 45 55 70 65 80 85 90 100 95 75 60 Augmentation Automation Real EstateAgriculture, Forestry, and FishingChemical and Advanced Materials Accommodation, Food, and LeisureEnergy Technology and UtilitiesMedical and Healthcare Services Supply Chain and TransportationAdvanced Manufacturing Education and TrainingInfrastructureOil and GasGovernment and Public Sector Automotive and Aerospace Information and Technology Services Retail and Wholesale of Consumer GoodsMining and Metals Production of Consumer Goods TelecommunicationsFinancial Services and Capital Markets ElectronicsInsurance and Pensions ManagementProfessional Services Workforce strategy: automation or augmentation, by industry FIGURE 5.2 Source World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Survey 2024.Share of employers surveyed planning to adopt the stated workforce strategies Future of Jobs Report 2025 83