New Economy Skills 2025

Share of executives indicating most proficient skills among their workforce, by regionFIGURE 4 Source: World Economic Forum Executive Opinion Survey 2025. Mean 0% 100%Working with others Creativity and problem solving Technology literacy Curiosity and lifelong learning Resilience, flexibility and agility Networks and cybersecurity AI and big data Central Asia Easter n Asia Europe Latin America and the Caribbean Middle East and Norther n Africa Norther n America Oceania South-Easter n Asia Souther n Asia Sub-Saharan Africa Global that educational foundations in essential skills may facilitate accelerated development during employment. Furthermore, workers continue to display stronger human-centric skills compared to digital skills, due perhaps to the greater difficulty in cultivating digital competencies or challenges for education systems in integrating them at earlier stages. Learners run up the clock on AI skills development As employers emphasize the need to increase digital proficiency, data from the online learning platform Coursera provides an encouraging outlook (Box 1). While AI is expected to be an area of significant demand and simultaneously an area where employee proficiency is relatively low, it now accounts for one of the largest proportions of learning hours on the Coursera platform. Notably, engagement with genAI has grown significantly, paralleling increased focus on core AI competencies. In contrast, interest in other technologies has been more variable. For instance, technological literacy, a key foundational skill, has experienced a decline in its share of learning hours after a notable increase in 2021. Similar downward trends have been observed in networks and cybersecurity, as well as programming. New Economy Skills: Building AI, Data and Digital Capabilities for Growth 11