Digitalization and the future of the labour market: new professions and competencies

The article examines the impact of digitalization on the employment structure and the system of professional competencies in the labour market of the Republic of Kazakhstan against the backdrop of global technological transformation. The relevance of the study stems from the accelerated adoption of artificial intelligence, automation and platform technologies, which, according to World Economic Forum estimates, will transform 22% of jobs worldwide by 2030 [1]. The aim of the paper is to identify the key directions of transformation of the occupational structure of the Kazakhstani labour market, to quantify the scale of this transformation, and to determine the priority competencies that ensure workers’ competitiveness. The study relies on a desk-research method: comparative, statistical and ratiobased analysis of data from the Bureau of National Statistics of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, the Labour Resources Development Centre, as well as reports by the World Economic Forum, McKinsey Global Institute, and Scopus/Web of Science-indexed publications for 2015–2025. It is established that over the next 5–10 years Kazakhstan is expected to see the emergence of 239 new occupations (71.6%) across 9 economic sectors and the transformation of 95 existing occupations (28.4%), while up to 40% of workers’ current skills require updating – equivalent to roughly 3.8 million economically active people by 2030. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the systematization of national and global statistical data on occupational transformation and in the authors’ original calculations of average annual growth rates, structural shares and comparative coefficients, forming a quantitative model of the scale of digital labour-market transformation in Kazakhstan. The practical significance of the results lies in their applicability to the design of educational programmes, occupational standards and state employment policy.

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