The World Economic Forum has put together a paper looking at the rise of what they call ‘Global Digital Jobs’ – essentially jobs that could be anywhere in the world, performed entirely digitally. More specifically, they define these as “jobs and workforces distributed across borders in different geographies, empowered by digital tools to perform their tasks, connect, and communicate globally”.
Two key findings from the report are interesting in particular:
- The size of the market is expected to grow by 25% by 2030 – in other words creating 25% more global digital jobs in the next 5 years
- Most jobs created in this area over the next 5 years will be in higher pay brackets
Job Growth: 25% in 5 years
They estimate that today there are around 73 million of these roles and that, over the next few years to 2030, that number will increase to around 92 million ‘Global Digital Jobs through population increases, creation of new jobs, and growth of jobs:
Just as they estimate the pool of these jobs will grow (by around 25%), they also believe that much of the growth will come in the form of higher paid jobs.
Pay Levels: Most Growth in Higher Pay Brackets
Below, you can see they break out the current market in terms of ‘Low’, ‘Medium’, and ‘High’ paid jobs, and then to the right they look at the same splits in their prediction for 2024’s market. While the number of ‘Low’ paid jobs stays around the same, ‘Medium’ paid jobs increase by a good margin, and most of the increase comes from ‘High’ paid jobs:
From our reading of this, we believe the current estimate to be a lowball off the actual number of jobs in this area. The underlying logic and assumptions all fully apply though, and the expectation of this to be a great area of growth – as much as the 25% in the next 5 years, as estimated by the WEF – is very likely.