The vast majority of Greece’s workforce will have to be retrained by 2030 in order to keep up with the ongoing technological changes while automation will continue to pervade the country’s labor market, a new report says.
The Future of Jobs Report 2025, released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) earlier this month, reveals that roughly 70 percent of Greek workers are expected to require reskilling or retraining over the next five years in order to keep their jobs or secure new employment. By 2030, six in ten workers in Greece are expected to have upgraded their skills while one in ten will be “left out of the race.”
While today’s skills are a blend of cognitive, self-efficacy and engagement skills, like analytical and creative thinking and technological literacy, the report notes that looking ahead to 2030, technology skills dominate the fastest-growing skills, driven by ongoing technological change and advancement. Meanwhile, the green transition is driving demand for environmental skills while the economic uncertainty and geoeconomic fragmentation, the report says, are also driving demand for some of the fastest-growing skills, such as resilience, agility and leadership.
In a world of evolving skill demands, the WEF report adds, most workers around the globe will need training, yet not everyone will have access to it.
Moreover, according to the report, a global shift in the workplace will result in the loss of 92 million jobs but 170 million new positions are forecast to be created, resulting to a net positive of 78 million jobs worldwide.
Automation expected to continue growing in Greece
One of the most interesting finds in the report in reference to Greece is the increase of automation in the country, which appears to be embraced more by Greece compared to other European counterparts.
Currently, 26 percent of tasks in Greece are machine-driven, higher than the global average of 22 percent. The WEF report forecasts that by 2030, over a third (36 percent) of all tasks in Greece will be performed by machines. Another 35 percent will involve human-technology collaboration while only 28 percent will be primarily performed by humans, down from 45 percent currently. (The report refers to specific tasks and not entire professions.)
The WEF data challenges the common perception that Greece lags behind in automation compared to the rest of the world. For example, in Germany, Europe’s industrial heart, 34 percent of tasks are predicted to be primarily technology-driven by 2030, a lower rate than in Greece. At the same time, humans in Germany are expected to handle 31 percent of tasks by 2030, a higher percentage from Greece’s 28 percent.
The Future of Jobs Report 2025 brings together perspectives of over 1,000 global employers, collectively employing more than 14 million workers globally and aims to project emerging and declining roles, skill shifts and the workforce practices expected to prevail in the evolving labor market worldwide.