The Skills Imperative 2035: The story so far
30 January 2025
NFER is leading a strategic research partnership, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, to identify the essential employment skills people will need for work by 2035.
This booklet tells the Skills Imperative story so far and summarises the key findings and recommendations from the published papers, as well as previewing upcoming reports.
- View the booklet
- Find out more about The Skills Imperative 2035 project.
Key Findings
- Based on our labour market projections, we identified the six Essential Employment Skills (skills that complement technical skills) which will be the ones most needed in 2035. These are; (1) collaboration, (2) Communication, (3) Creative thinking, (4) Information literacy, (5) Organising, planning and prioritising and (6) Problem solving and decision making.
- By 2035, 22 per cent of workers will have substantial essential employment skills deficiencies and many of these deficiencies are in jobs that will grow by 2035. This means around seven million workers won’t have the EES they need to do their jobs effectively in 2035.
- Sector growth will primarily be in areas such as non-marketed services (including health and education), while trade, accommodation, transport and manufacturing are projected to decline.