Objective / Introduction
The purpose of this report is to look beyond current labour market conditions so that the University of Canterbury can be proactive in designing its strategies and programming to meet the future professional needs of students.
To do this, we selected and compared five recent (2021-2026) outputs about the future of work from distinct source types – one labour market analytics firm [1], one international corporation [2], one international organisation [3], one government entity [4], and one academic research article [5] – to consider what kind of work environment(s) our students will be entering in three to five years.
Because these publications are already syntheses about the future of work but from different perspectives, this report compares their emerging trends and predictions regarding labour market shifts on the horizon, as well as highlighting the capabilities UC students need to be building toward today even if demand for those skills has not yet fully arrived.
Trends and Predictions
Global labour market analytics firm, Lightcast [1], identified three converging pressures in 2026 that it claims are “permanently reshaping the balance between labor supply and demand”: geopolitics (i.e., “the displacement of talent”), AI (i.e., “the disruption of talent”), and labour shortages (i.e., “the deficit of talent”). Similarly, a study commissioned by the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) [4] in 2023 framed the future of work in NZ around five global megatrends: technological change, demographic change, globalisation, and climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic (due to its residual impact on policies and the digitalisation of work). This all follows the findings from a systematic literature review conducted by Jetha et al. [5] in 2021 that included academic research, non-academic reports, and social media posts, and categorised the future of work in nine trends that can be broadly understood as emerging technologies, globalisation, climate change, and reprioritisation of skills and values.
While these forecasts paint a rather bleak picture about the future of work, the narrative isn’t quite that simple. OECD’s [3] 2026 Employment Outlook argued that megatrends including AI and digitalisation, globalisation, climate change, and population ageing are reshaping local labour markets unevenly and in ways not yet fully understood. And while OECD confirmed graduate unemployment has been rising relative to the wider working-age population, their analysis showed this gap began widening well before the COVID-19 pandemic, complicating narratives that blame rising graduate joblessness in some areas primarily on AI.
Fortunately, there is also optimism across these publications. Although Jartha et al. [5] cautioned that up to half of roles could be replaced by automation, they anticipated that the creation of new jobs due to technological advancements would offset any such displacements. Likewise, Lightcast [1] predicted that instead of AI replacing human workers outright, AI investment will be concentrated in the roles that also happen to be the most saturated with talent. Meanwhile, the sectors facing the most significant labour shortages, such as healthcare and hospitality, are expected to see the lowest rate of AI adoption.
Another key dimension of this discussion is the shift in desirable skills in the workforce. MBIE [4] surveyed 212 senior executives from NZ’s largest employers and identified the core skills required by employees to perform well in roles at the time of enquiry (2023) as well as those they believed would require the most upskilling or re-training among the NZ workforce in the next five years (i.e., by 2028). In 2023, communication and attention to detail were rated as the two skills most desired in workers. Looking forward, leadership and problem solving were rated as the top training priorities for NZ. Evidence of this predicted skill reprioritisation coming to fruition can be found in Lightcast’s [1] report that highlighted the required skills listed in job postings across all sectors around the world changed more between 2021 and 2024 than at any other point in modern history, with a third of the skills in the average job changed... and the rate of this skill change is still accelerating.
So, what does this all mean for UC students who may be questioning the employment value of their degree(s)? Lightcast [1] provided evidence showing that tertiary education is becoming increasingly valuable despite certain social narratives claiming the opposite. According to Lightcast [1], the roles most highly exposed to automation are those where tasks are routine, rules-based, or language-driven. In those cases, workers will need to set themselves apart through higher-order capabilities such as critical thinking, domain expertise beyond textbook knowledge, and the ability to critique and refine AI-generated content.
Summary
Each report was adamant that the nature of work is changing more quickly than ever before. Given the different methods and agendas of these five independently-produced publications, their convergence of the same handful of forces – technology/AI, globalisation, climate change, demographic trends – along with the recent six-year timeframe in which they were published (2021-2026), is telling for how the nature of work over the next three-to-five years (2029-2031) might unfold. Jetha et al. essentially previewed, almost trend-for-trend, what Lightcast [1], the OECD [3], and MBIE [4] each arrived at years later.
So, what is the solution? The reports make several suggestions directed at employers, mostly how they can efficiently retrain current employees and create equitable opportunities for labour market engagement as they attempt to fill new roles. For UC, the constant across these five sources is not that the future of work is uniquely threatening to today's students but that the capabilities separating growth from stagnation (e.g., empathy, active listening, emotional intelligence, resilience, critical thinking, and the judgement to work effectively alongside AI) are much more crucial than before to develop and demonstrate during their studies.
