New Research from the The World Economic Forum provides significant evidence that there will be a talent crisis affecting every region of the world over the coming years.  The supply and demand analysis from the Global Talent Risk report shows that widespread talent scarcity will persist for decades.  This scarcity will redefine human capital practices and ways of doing business for years to come.  This challenge will force HR professionals in organizations of all sizes to focus more effort on “talent creation” and less on “talent management”.

Despite high unemployment, at least 3 million U.S. positions currently remain unfilled.  In 10 years, there could be as many as 20 million vacant jobs in the United States unless the current education to employment system undergoes radical changes.   There will be intense competition for people with science, math, technology, and engineering skills.   According to Peter Loscher, CEC of Siemens AG, “We have to tackle the mismatch between the demographic gap and the skills gap.”

Sectors such as business services, communication, health care, information technology, trade industries and transportation will find it very hard to locate the right person for the job.  By 2020, just finding enough workers will be the pressing issue for employers due to declining birthrates.  According to Global Talent Risk, by 2030, the U.S will need to add more than 25 million workers.