• A global job crisis is brewing, Singapore’s president warned in a World Economic Forum panel.
• About 1.2 billion new workers will be competing for 400 million jobs over the next decade, he said.
• Tharman Shanmugaratnam called for an overhaul of education and labor force training to help workers.

Singapore’s president says a global job crisis is looming, and tackling it will require governments around the world to reimagine how they educate, train, and care for their workers.

Tharman Shanmugaratnam sounded the alarm during a Wednesday panel titled “Closing the Jobs Gap” at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. He delivered a wide-ranging monologue in the session moderated by Business Insider’s editor in chief, Jamie Heller.

Shanmugaratnam — an economist with degrees from Harvard, Cambridge, and the London School of Economics — said that roughly 1.2 billion people from developing and emerging nations are set to enter the global workforce over the next decade, but only 400 million new jobs are projected to be created in that period.

If another 800 million people wind up underemployed or fully unemployed, it won’t just be an economic, social, and political nightmare — it will represent a “crisis of social compact” and a “crisis of hope, of self-belief and dignity, and a crisis of solidarity,” he said.

Narrowing the jobs gap will require “shaping human potential through life,” from the crucial first three years of a child’s life to what they learn in school and at work, Shanmugaratnam said.

He flagged the mismatch between the overly academic and insufficiently technical education provided by many universities, and the skills that employers demand, which has left many graduates jobless and could leave a “whole generation feeling the system has failed them.”

He also underscored the need to equip workers with the breadth of abilities and soft skills necessary to excel in their careers.

AI and informal work

Shanmugaratnam has held top-level government positions focused on human resources, education, finance, and economic and social policies during his career.

At Davos, he discussed the rise of artificial intelligence and the prospect that the technology could lead to mass displacement of workers.

He called for governments and employers to continually invest in workers to increase the chances that AI complements their skills instead of rendering them obsolete. He also urged authorities to take care of workers replaced by the tech.

Shanmugaratnam also flagged that the vast majority of workers in the developing world are in the informal sector, so they lack job security, have no opportunity to develop their skills, and are underemployed.

He called for other countries to follow Singapore’s example and give gig workers benefits such as workplace injury compensation and social security, and ensure employers build up their workforce’s skills over time.