05/29/2025

The "Upskilling Imperative"

It's required at scale for the future of work

Amid overall uncertainty, including about the future that AI will bring, two things are clear. One: Jobs and occupations will change as new technologies are used to handle and support more tasks. The transition to AI is already underway, according to the results of the latest McKinsey American Opportunity Survey (AOS) in which roughly 20 percent of employed respondents say that they have used Generative AI (Gen AI) for work purposes. Two: As work transforms amid the adoption of new technologies, upskilling that enables occupation switching will be even more important than it is today.

Fortunately, U.S. workers have historically been highly adept at modifying what they do for work, and the U.S. labor market has shown itself to be nimble and adaptable relative to some advanced-economy peers. Between 2016 and 2019, Americans changed occupations nearly three times as often as Europeans did. The COVID-19 pandemic era was a period of greatly accelerated occupational change in Europe, but the United States continued to outpace it even then. The latest AOS data (sampled in August 2024) found that 17 percent of employed US respondents have switched to a different occupation since March 2020.

Of currently employed AOS respondents, 44 percent say that they are willing to change occupations. While this figure is lower than the one seen in 2021 (when it was nearly 50 percent), it illustrates the robust interest that Americans have in pursuing more pay and more hours—the primary motivations for an occupational switch.

Please select this link to read the complete article from McKinsey.