Sixty-two percent of executives believe they will need to retrain or replace more than a quarter of their workforce between now and 2023 due to advancing automation and digitization.
As for solutions, 82 percent of executives at companies with more than $100 million in annual revenues believe retraining and reskilling must be at least half of the answer to addressing their skills gap. Within that consensus, though, were clear regional differences. Fully 94 percent of those surveyed in Europe insisted the answer would either be an equal mix of hiring and retraining or mainly retraining versus a strong but less resounding 62 percent in this camp in the United States. By contrast, 35 percent of Americans thought the challenge would have to be met mainly or exclusively by hiring new talent, compared to just 7 percent in this camp in Europe (Exhibit 3). – Retraining and reskilling workers in the age of automation, McKinsey
Two thoughts from this report:
- Do executives think they need to upskill? Maybe their inability to see the training needs, new jobs, and workforce of the future is shaped by their inability to reskill.
- Americans who think their companies are going to invest in them and their future career are mistaken.