Skills for the Future: What Employers Look For in 2026

Which skills for the future should you build while you are still in high school? Employers give a clearer answer than you might expect. In the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025, more than 1,000 employers ranked the skills they value most today. They also named the skills they expect to grow by 2030. This guide explains that list. It also shows how you can build and prove each skill through projects, clubs and volunteering.

Why skills for the future matter now

According to the WEF report, employers expect 39% of workers’ existing skills to change or become outdated by 2030. That figure was 44% in the 2023 report and 57% in 2020, so change remains large. The share is even higher in some economies: 48% in Egypt and 44% in Türkiye, while Saudi Arabia sits at 39%. In other words, many skills you learn now will need updating during your career.

Employers also feel this gap already. In the same survey, 63% of employers name skill gaps as the biggest barrier to changing their business, and 85% plan to prioritise upskilling. The report puts it simply: if the world’s workforce were 100 people, 59 would need training by 2030. You can read the full report on the World Economic Forum website.

The core skills employers value in 2025

The WEF asked employers which skills are core for their workers today. These are the top ten, in order:

1. Analytical thinking, named by about 7 in 10 employers (69%)
2. Resilience, flexibility and agility (67%)
3. Leadership and social influence (61%)
4. Creative thinking
5. Motivation and self-awareness
6. Technological literacy
7. Empathy and active listening
8. Curiosity and lifelong learning (50%)
9. Talent management
10. Service orientation and customer service

Most of these are human skills, not technical ones. That is good news for students, because you can practise them at school, at home and in your community.

Skills for the future that grow fastest by 2030

The report also measures which skills employers expect to use more by 2030. AI and big data top that list, followed by networks and cybersecurity, and then technological literacy. Creative thinking, resilience, and curiosity and lifelong learning come next. For the first time, environmental stewardship also enters the top ten.

Country notes also add useful detail. In Türkiye, the fastest-growing skills are AI and big data, technological literacy, and networks and cybersecurity. Multilingualism is also gaining importance there faster than average. In Saudi Arabia, over 70% of employers name technological literacy as a skill on the rise. Moreover, 38% of Saudi employers expect to remove degree requirements, against 19% globally, so proven skills count even more.

How to build skills for the future in class and clubs

Employers and universities rarely want a list of adjectives. Instead, they want evidence. Each skill below comes with a simple way to build it and to show it.

Analytical thinking. Choose a real problem at school, such as canteen waste or late buses, and collect data with a short survey. Then look for patterns and suggest one solution. Finally, a one-page report with your charts is proof you can share.

Leadership and social influence. You do not need a title to lead. Start a club, organise a charity event or coordinate a group project. Afterwards, write down what you did and what changed, for example how many people joined.

Creative thinking. Design something new: a poster campaign, a short video, an app prototype or a better way to run a class activity. A small portfolio of your work shows creativity better than any word on your CV.

Technological literacy, AI and data. Learn spreadsheets well, try a beginner coding course and use AI tools for research while you check every fact they give you. Then keep a simple online folder of what you build.

Skills for the future you can build outside school

Resilience and flexibility. Take on something hard that you may not master at first, such as a new sport, a language or a competition. When a plan fails, note what you changed. Interviews often include a question about a setback, so a real story helps.

Empathy and active listening. Volunteer with younger students, older people or a local association. Tutoring a classmate also teaches you to listen before you explain. Then ask the person who supervised you for a short reference, which is strong evidence.

Curiosity and lifelong learning. Follow one free online course each term in a subject outside your timetable. Also keep a list of the courses, books and talks you finish, with one line on what you learned from each.

Environmental stewardship. Join or start an eco project with a result you can measure, such as less plastic in the canteen. Besides, this skill is now in employers’ top ten of rising skills.

How to show your skills

Keep an evidence file

Keep one folder, on paper or online, with certificates, project photos, reports, references and a short note on each activity. When you write a CV or a personal statement, real examples will be ready. Our guide to the personal statement for university shows how to turn them into strong paragraphs.

Tell short skill stories

For each skill, prepare a short story: the situation, what you did and the result. People remember a concrete story far better than a list of qualities. Then put two or three target skills into a one-year plan with our guide to career planning for students.

How ILEAP helps you build skills for the future

In ILEAP partner schools, career coaching sessions help students see their strengths and choose which skills to develop. Experts from different fields explain which skills matter in their daily work. In addition, the EXPERT and ELITE packages include up to two specialized workshops for a deeper experience in one field. On the iLEAP platform, lessons, community and projects turn into evidence in each student’s profile. Explore the ILEAP program or see the iLEAP platform.

Frequently asked questions

What are the most important skills for the future?

According to the WEF Future of Jobs Report 2025, analytical thinking is the top core skill, named by about 7 in 10 employers. AI and big data is the fastest-rising skill to 2030, followed by networks and cybersecurity and technological literacy.

Are soft skills more important than technical skills?

Employers want both. Human skills such as resilience, leadership and empathy fill most of the core list, while technology skills grow fastest. So the strongest profile combines the two. To see how this plays out in real careers, read our guide to jobs AI cannot replace.

Can I build these skills without expensive courses?

Yes. School projects, clubs, volunteering, part-time work and free online courses all build them. What matters most is doing real activities and keeping evidence of what you did.