Looking beyond the uncertainties of future immigration policy in the UK, the challenge clearly invites businesses to rethink their attitudes to skills creation, their investment in training and the role of automation within their operations.

Upskilling the workforce

Recent Deloitte research has shown that while technical expertise and knowledge are important in advanced economies, the most valuable skills are cognitive, creative and collaborative. The skill classification used in our survey is designed to reflect these high-level skills.

Using detailed occupational data from the US Occupational Information Network (O*NET) and labour and earning statistics from the UK Office of National Statistics, the research assessed the important of 120 different skills, abilities and areas of knowledge in the workforce, in order to forecast the likely impact that the shift towards high-level skills will have on the economy by 2030. The results showed clearly that technical training and knowledge alone are insufficient to meet the skills needs of modern organisations. The rising number of high-skill jobs the UK is likely to have to fill from domestic sources will require more than technical education: policies aimed at fostering high-level skills will have to reflect the primacy of cognitive abilities if the economy is to match its potential.

Most important attributes

The promise of automation

Using employment data from the ONS together with estimates of the probability of computerisation, we created a ranking by industry of the percentage of jobs that could be automated. This data provides a guide to the potential for automation in the UK economy.

Opportunities to automate