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Students and parents keep asking the same question: if AI can solve the problem, what is the point of learning to solve it? One useful source is what employers themselves say they will need. The World Economic Forum surveys them every few years, and its latest report gives a clear list.
What is the Future of Jobs Report?
The Future of Jobs Report 2025, published in January 2025, draws on a survey of over 1,000 employers representing more than 14 million workers across 22 industry clusters and 55 economies. It covers expected changes from 2025 to 2030. It is a survey of employers' expectations, not a certain forecast, and it is global rather than India-specific, so treat it as a strong signal, not a map of your future.
Which skills are expected to grow?
From the report's key findings:
Analytical thinking is still first. It "remains the most sought-after core skill among employers, with seven out of 10 companies considering it as essential in 2025." Next come resilience, flexibility and agility, along with leadership and social influence.
Fastest-growing skills: AI and big data top the list, followed by networks and cybersecurity, and technology literacy.
Also rising: creative thinking; resilience, flexibility and agility; and curiosity and lifelong learning.
Declining: manual dexterity, endurance and precision, with 24% of respondents expecting their importance to fall.
On average, the report expects workers to see 39% of their existing skill sets transformed or outdated over 2025 to 2030, down from 44% in the 2023 edition.
What does it say about jobs?
The report projects that structural change will create jobs equal to 14% of today's employment (170 million) and displace 8% (92 million), a net gain of 7%, or 78 million jobs. Technology roles such as big data specialists and AI and machine learning specialists are the fastest-growing in percentage terms. Frontline roles grow most in absolute numbers, and secondary and tertiary teachers are also expected to grow. On training, the report says that if the world's workforce were 100 people, 59 would need training by 2030.
There is a catch for students. In a 2025 field experiment with high school maths students, Bastani and colleagues found that those who used a standard GPT-4 chat for practice scored 17% lower than peers who never had access, once the tool was removed. A tutor version designed to protect learning largely avoided that drop.
What does this mean for a student now?
Each skill on the list has a school version you can practise this year.
Analytical thinking: solve unfamiliar problems by breaking them down, not by matching them to a memorised type. Polya's four steps are a good start.
AI and technology literacy: learn how AI tools work and where they fail. Use them to quiz you, then check what they say.
Creative thinking: write your own questions on a chapter, or find a second method for a problem you have already solved.
Resilience and flexibility: practise recovering from a bad test with a calm review. See how to bounce back after a bad test.
Curiosity and lifelong learning: read one thing a week outside the syllabus, and learn how to learn: spacing, testing yourself, explaining.
A one-term plan
Weekly: one hard unfamiliar problem, worked fully on paper before any help.
Weekly: one AI session where the AI asks the questions and you answer.
Fortnightly: write five questions of your own on a chapter, and swap with a friend.
Monthly: one short project, such as coding a small simulation, building a model, or writing up an experiment.
After every test: a written review of what went wrong and what you will change.
For families thinking about careers beyond the obvious routes, our guide to talking about STEM careers beyond engineering and medicine is a good next read.
Where Fermi fits
Fermi's AI tutor is built to teach rather than answer: it holds a line of reasoning across a session, notices where you are stuck and decides whether to explain, ask or show. You still do the working yourself, which is the point.
