Workforce planning guide
The 2030 skills, mapped to O*NET
The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 (January 2025) names the core skills employers expect to matter more by 2030. This page maps 13 of them to the U.S. Department of Labor's O*NET occupation data, so you can see which jobs lean on each one and plan hiring and development around them.
What the list is
The Future of Jobs Report 2025 is the Forum's survey of employers about how jobs and skills will change between 2025 and 2030. In its skills chapter (Skills outlook), employers name the skills they expect to grow in importance. AI and big data grows fastest, followed by networks and cybersecurity and technological literacy, and analytical thinking remains the skill most employers call core today.
We map these 13:
- AI and big data. Working with data at scale and with the software that learns from it.
- Technological literacy. Using, choosing and troubleshooting the technology the work runs on.
- Curiosity and lifelong learning. Seeking out new information and keeping knowledge current.
- Creative thinking. Coming up with new ideas and unusual ways to solve a problem.
- Talent management. Hiring, developing and building the team.
- Systems thinking. Seeing how the parts of a system affect each other and the outcome.
- Motivation and self-awareness. Setting one's own goals, managing one's own time and checking one's own work.
- Resilience, flexibility and agility. Staying effective under pressure, in conflict and when the rules change.
- Leadership and social influence. Directing, persuading and motivating other people.
- Analytical thinking. Reasoning through information to reach a sound conclusion.
- Empathy and active listening. Listening closely and understanding how other people react and why.
- Service orientation and customer service. Looking for ways to help customers and the public, and doing it well.
- Resource management and operations. Planning and controlling money, materials and the way work gets done.
The report names other rising skills too, such as networks and cybersecurity. Those are specialist skills rather than broad ones, so we leave them out. BlissPoint is not affiliated with the World Economic Forum, and the Forum has not reviewed this mapping.
How each skill maps to O*NET
O*NET rates the importance of each skill, ability, knowledge area and work activity for nearly 1,000 U.S. occupations, on a 1 to 5 scale. Each 2030 skill below is read from 3 to 5 of those ratings. The occupations named are the three that score highest on it, out of 100.
| 2030 skill | O*NET elements | Scores highest |
|---|---|---|
| AI and big data | Programming; Mathematics; Mathematical Reasoning; Analyzing Data or Information; Computers and Electronics; plus hot data and analytics technologies, listed as evidence |
|
| Technological literacy | Working with Computers; Computers and Electronics; Technology Design; Troubleshooting; plus hot technologies, listed as evidence | |
| Curiosity and lifelong learning | Active Learning; Learning Strategies; Updating and Using Relevant Knowledge | |
| Creative thinking | Originality; Fluency of Ideas; Thinking Creatively | |
| Talent management | Management of Personnel Resources; Coaching and Developing Others; Staffing Organizational Units; Developing and Building Teams; Personnel and Human Resources | |
| Systems thinking | Systems Analysis; Systems Evaluation; Complex Problem Solving |
|
| Motivation and self-awareness (proxy) | Monitoring; Time Management; Determine Tasks, Priorities and Goals; Freedom to Make Decisions |
|
| Resilience, flexibility and agility (proxy) | Category Flexibility; Time Pressure; Conflict Situations; Dealing With Unpleasant, Angry, or Discourteous People | |
| Leadership and social influence | Persuasion; Coordination; Guiding, Directing, and Motivating Subordinates; Selling or Influencing Others; Coordinate or Lead Others in Accomplishing Work Activities |
|
| Analytical thinking | Critical Thinking; Judgment and Decision Making; Deductive Reasoning; Inductive Reasoning | |
| Empathy and active listening | Active Listening; Social Perceptiveness; Assisting and Caring for Others | |
| Service orientation and customer service | Service Orientation; Customer and Personal Service; Performing for or Working Directly with the Public; Deal With External Customers or the Public in General |
|
| Resource management and operations | Management of Financial Resources; Management of Material Resources; Operations Analysis; Monitoring and Controlling Resources |
A proxy skill has no close match in the O*NET data we use, so it is read from the nearest ratings, mostly how much the work demands it. Technologies are shown beside a score, never counted in it.
How to use it for hiring and development
- Write the job, then check it. Link a role to its O*NET occupation and look at its 2030 profile. If the profile rates creative thinking highly and the job description never mentions it, the description is behind the work.
- Ask about the high-scoring skills in interviews. Pick the two or three skills the occupation rates highest and ask for a specific past example of each. Use the same questions for every candidate.
- Plan development where the work is heading. A team whose roles lean on AI and big data or systems thinking needs training budgets and stretch projects there first.
- Look at the team, not one job. A team snapshot shows which skills the mix of roles depends on and which ones no role covers, which is a question about structure as much as people.
Want it done with you? Skills Taxonomy and Workforce Assessment is a fixed-fee project, $48,736.58 for up to 40 roles, that ends in a written hiring and development plan. The first 12 months of Organization Viewer are included in the price for a company of up to 1,000 people on the Team or Growth plan. What the project includes
Method and limits
Each rating is put on 0 to 100 (a rating of 1 is 0, 5 is 100), and a skill's score is the plain average of its rated elements. A team's score is the average of its occupations' scores, weighted by headcount. European (ESCO) occupations borrow the ratings of their closest O*NET occupation from the official ESCO-O*NET crosswalk.
These are occupation-level planning signals. A score says how much a kind of job depends on a skill, not whether anyone in that job has it. Use it to plan roles, hiring and training; never to rate, rank or select employees.
Data: O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA), CC BY 4.0. Skills list: World Economic Forum, Future of Jobs Report 2025.
Questions
Where does the list of skills come from?
From the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, published in January 2025 and based on a survey of employers. We use 13 of the core skills it expects to grow in importance between 2025 and 2030. BlissPoint is not affiliated with the World Economic Forum.
Does a score describe a person?
No. Every score describes an occupation: how important O*NET rates the mapped skills, abilities, knowledge, activities and work context for that kind of job. It says nothing about what any one person can do, and it should not be used to rate employees.
Why are two of the skills marked as proxies?
O*NET's work styles, such as stress tolerance and initiative, are not in the data we bundle. Motivation and self-awareness and resilience, flexibility and agility are read from the nearest elements that are, mostly ratings of how much the work demands them.
Is the calculator free?
Yes. It needs no sign-in, and nothing you type into it is stored.
See it for your own team
Enter up to 10 job titles in the free calculator, or link your roles to occupations in Organization Viewer and get the profile from your real org chart.