The New Wave of Jobs: How Can Skills Leaders Support Workers

The Geography of Opportunity is Shifting

The discussion highlighted the importance of place. New job creation is not evenly distributed. It is concentrated in what Rachel identified as “frontier regions,” where research, investment, and production are coming together.

Examples include:

• Semiconductor manufacturing tied to federal investment
• Data center growth in parts of Virginia
• Quantum industry development in Colorado and New Mexico
• Advanced energy and battery ecosystems in multiple states

These regions offer a preview of where demand is heading. They also reveal how uneven preparedness can be.

Some communities are building strong pipelines between education, training, and industry. Others are still trying to understand what skills are needed. There is an opportunity to learn from early movers, but that learning is not yet happening at scale.

The Generative AI Boom is Affecting Workers Differently

The panel pushed back on the assumption that automation will follow the same pattern as previous industrial revolutions.

Earlier waves of technological change had a concentrated impact on workers without degrees, especially in manufacturing. What is emerging now looks more mixed.

Roles that involve hands-on work with machines or physical systems are holding up well so far. In many cases, new technologies are augmenting these workers rather than replacing them.

This creates a different set of questions for workforce strategy:

• How do you expand access to these roles?
• How do you make training pathways more visible and effective?
• How do you avoid repeating past patterns of uneven impact?

There is no guarantee of a better outcome, but there is a chance to shape one. For roles that are at high risk of automation, higher education and industry must collaborate to re-skill those workers.

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Skills-Based Hiring is Becoming More Prominent

The shift toward skills-based hiring came up as a consistent theme, but in a more grounded way than usual.

In frontier industries, such as advanced manufacturing, employers are not adopting skills-based approaches as a matter of principle. They are doing it because they need to.

Degree pipelines alone are not producing enough talent, with many roles requiring specific technical skills that can be developed outside traditional four-year programs.

This is leading to:

• More openness to non-degree candidates
• Greater emphasis on demonstrated capability
• Increased use of targeted training and on-the-job learning

Higher education leaders must recognise the challenge being posed. What alternative avenues can higher education create for skills development?

AI is Changing How People Navigate and Build Careers

Another part of the discussion focused on how AI is being applied within workforce development itself. Several use cases stood out:

• Tools that help individuals map their skills to available roles and training options, with Adam Goldfarb saying, “AI is good at diagnosing which kind of sub-skill you might need” to attain a new job role
• Systems that provide more practice-based learning and feedback
• Efforts to increase capacity in organizations that do not have deep technical expertise

There is also early movement toward what some described as “AI-native” organizations, where processes are designed around AI technologies from the start. At the same time, many existing organizations are still figuring out how to adapt.

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The Biggest Issue May be Coordination

Across all the topics discussed during the panel, one challenge kept resurfacing: the lack of shared learning.

Different regions and organizations are experimenting with workforce strategies tied to frontier industries. However, the insights and learnings are not spreading efficiently.

That shows up in a few ways:

• Communities repeating the same early-stage mistakes
• Delays in building effective training programs
• Limited alignment between education providers, employers, and policymakers

As noted in the discussion, there is a growing body of experience across the US, but no consistent mechanism for sharing it. For skills leaders, there must be a drive to connect with peers, and build networks to share knowledge.

What This Means for Skills Leaders

The discussion did not point to a single solution, but it did clarify where attention is needed.

A few priorities stand out:

• Spend more time with employers in emerging industries to understand real skill needs
• Build flexible pathways that do not rely solely on degrees
• Invest in tools and systems that help workers navigate changing career options
• Look beyond your own region for examples of what is working
• Treat workforce strategy as an ongoing, adaptive process rather than a fixed plan