Jobs are more disrupted today than ever before, and changing at breakneck speed, according to a new report from Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Emsi Burning Glass, and The Burning Glass Institute. Over one-third of the top 20 skills requested in postings for the average US job have changed since 2016, and one in five skills is an entirely new requirement for that job. 

The report, titled Shifting Skills, Moving Targets, and Remaking the Workforce, is being released today. Drawing on data from more than 15 million online job postings from 2016 through 2021, the authors created the Skill Disruption Index to examine and compare how rapidly and significantly skill requests evolved over time within specific roles. In reviewing the five-year data, the study detected an acceleration in the pace of change: nearly three-quarters of jobs changed more from 2019 through 2021 than they did from 2016 through 2018.

"Company leaders—even HR and recruiting leaders—may not even realize how profoundly and rapidly the jobs in their industry are evolving since not every job is disrupted to the same degree, at the same rate, or in the same way. The challenge for employers and employees alike is to keep up—or, better yet, to get ahead of the trends," said Jens Baier, a managing director and senior partner at BCG and a coauthor of the report.

The Great Disruption

According to the report, certain sectors—finance; design, media, and writing; business management and operations; HR; and IT—have changed faster than others.

In the fastest-changing jobs, almost 80% of the top 20 skills either are new or have changed significantly in importance. Examples of these fast-changing jobs include accounting supervisor, advertising manager, marketing associate, software developer, and solar engineer.

By contrast, other occupations have seen 15% or fewer of their skills change. Many of these are physical occupations, such as warehouse worker, packager, janitor, tractor trailer truck driver, and shipping and receiving clerk (see exhibit).

"The pandemic has accelerated the pace of change as people in a broad range of careers have been forced to embrace new ways of working and new skills. But the forces driving this tremendous dynamism were already at play coming into the pandemic as technology reshaped jobs and brought together skills from across domains," said Matt Sigelman, president of The Burning Glass Institute and a coauthor of the report. "The net effect of all of this is that today's workers need an increasingly broad set of skills, blending digital expertise and foundational proficiency."