AI futures of work

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After decades of disruption following earlier waves of digital technology breakthroughs, recent fast-paced developments in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are expected to markedly transform labour markets, organisations, jobs and skills. While there is concern about AI’s potential negative consequences on employment, employee well-being and individual rights, its potential for driving innovation and augmenting productivity across many segments of economy and society is widely acknowledged. Digitalisation in labour markets is not only a cause of job automation. It is also offering marked opportunities for transformation in jobs and business models. It can also improve our ability to understand labour market developments and improve skills intelligence and matching.

Cedefop’s AI futures of work project is structured around the following themes:

• Cedefop AI skills survey

Cedefop carried out in 2024 a first European AI skills survey, as a follow-up to the second European Skills and Jobs Survey (ESJS2). The survey used an innovative sampling approach to collect reliable and representative information from random samples of European adult workers, having deployed high-quality pre-testing, translation and fieldwork procedures. 

The survey focused on mapping European adult workers’ use of advanced digital technologies, particularly AI, in their job and assessing their AI skill gaps. It provides insights to the following questions:

• How many adult workers are using AI technologies as part of their work?
• What jobs are mostly at risk of automation and task transformation by AI technologies?
• To what extent are European employers supporting AI take-up?
• What share of European workers have AI skill gaps and are they participating in AI education and training to mitigate them?
• What is the level of AI literacy in the European adult workforce?

Cedefop’s publication ‘Skills empower workers in the AI revolution’ provides first insights from this novel AI skills survey.

First survey findings were also discussed at Cedefop’s ‘Learning for an AI workplace’ seminar, organised in 2024 in cooperation with the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the EU.

• Cedefop sectoral AI skills foresights

Cedefop initiated in 2024 a new AI skills foresight study. The initiative focuses on exploring mid-term scenarios of how automation and AI adoption will shape the future of organisations in strategic sectors of the EU economy. 

The research will initially focus on three key economic sectors—automotive manufacturing, geriatric nursing, and creative industries—which are likely to undergo marked restructuring in skill needs and workforce transformation because of exposure to AI technologies. Its methodology builds on a combination of stakeholder interviews, multiple rounds of Delphi-style stakeholder surveys and specific focus groups/workshops.

The findings, to be published in 2026-27, will aim to help policymakers and stakeholders guide an AI-driven transition that maximizes benefits while minimising disruption to Europe’s workforce.

• Automation, digitalisation and digital skills in EU workplaces

Using mainly data from Cedefop’s European skills and jobs surveys and other skills intelligence sources, we investigate the risk of automation and the overall impact of digitalisation on EU workers’ jobs and skills.

Cedefop’s analysis aims to tackle issues such as:

• What level of digital and AI skills are required in job markets?
• Which EU workers experience digital or AI skill gaps?
• What drives EU workers’ participation in digital skills training?
• Who is more likely to be affected by job polarisation and machine automation?
• What new skill needs may be required in emerging jobs and in future work environments?

Our research seeks to identify how employers can implement human-centric workplacepractices, with emphasis on in-firm social dialogue, that can mitigate any adverse employment and deskilling impacts of AI. This evidence is a key input to the effective design of upskilling and reskilling policies in the EU.

• Crowdlearn: skills in the online platform economy

Cedefop’s CrowdLearn is the first study to examine how EU workers in the online platform economy develop their skills, and how these platforms match skills supply with demand, with a view to drawing lessons for European skills and education policy.

About 3% of European citizens work through online platform work to earn a living. Insights on what skills gig workers learn and need to be successful in the online gig economy can provide useful insights for how to make vocational education and training more relevant to trends in the future of work. These include an increasing reliance on hybrid work (such as self-employment, multiple job-holding, contingent work, virtual remote work) and use of algorithmic management practices in workplaces.

Cedefop’s CrowdLearn study addressed the following research questions:

• What skills do crowdworkers develop through their work and with what learning processes – individual and social?
• Are there differences in learning and skill development practices between crowdworkers and workers in traditional labour markets?
• Do platform markets promote effective skill development and utilisation of crowdworkers’ skills?
• What about recognition/validation and portability of crowdworkers’ skills and credentials?
• What policies can improve skill development and matching of crowdworkers?

The study findings were partly based on a dedicated qualitative data collection phase, interviewing in-depth crowdworkers, representatives of stakeholder organisations and platforms.

Another key contribution of the project was the development and implementation of a unique Crowdlearn survey, which resulted in the compilation of a dataset of 1 000 online platform freelancers from four major online labour platforms and an additional supplement of 1 000 microworkers.

• Adapting VET for the future of work

The trend towards greater digitalisation and automation in EU job markets highlights a need for VET systems that can adapt and integrate digital changes into more flexible and modern VET infrastructure, programmes and curricula. VET has a key role to play in adequately preparing citizens for the challenges of the futures of work.

As part of Cedefop’s AI futures of work project, information is collected on the extent to which initial and continuing VET are responding to the challenges associated with the introduction of automated digital processes or machines, advanced robotics, AI and other Industry 4.0 technologies in economies. It also focuses on the extent to which VET systems are themselves using digital technologies to facilitate excellence and more socially inclusive learning.

Based on insights from Cedefop’s ReferNet network, the project collects country-specific insights on national VET policy strategies and programmes responding to AI and digitalisation, the use of AI/big data methods for identifying skill needs and recent national initiatives and training programmes for upskilling or reskilling workers in AI or those facing risk of automation due to AI.   

Refernet’s country thematic perspectives reports VET for the future of work are available here.

To strengthen skills intelligence capacity among EU countries and stakeholders, particularly targeted at methods for identifying new skill needs due to technological change, Cedefop has prepared a series of practical guides on Understanding technological change and skill needs:

Volume 1: Skill surveys or skills forecasting

Volume 2: Big data and artificial intelligence methods.

Volume 3: Skill foresight