From population bomb to productivity boom

This month I had the privilege of speaking at an event focused on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, organised by SEVENTEENx. The topic couldn’t have been closer to my heart. I’ve believed for as long as I can remember that business has the power to strengthen communities as much as economies, a belief shaped long before I ever stepped into the corporate world.

When my team introduced me to SEVENTEENx and Mick Hase, I was delighted, because I share the belief that business can enable societies to achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals.  It’s a belief I’ve grappled with since I was young.

You see, I was born in 1968, to Australian parents, far from home, in a remote Canadian community.  They had crossed the world to understand disadvantage and work to bridge the divide between the haves and the have nots.  My father was a social worker who believed that sometimes you need to leave your own country to see it clearly from the outside.  My mother was a teacher who always sought out the hardest tasks, from engaging disadvantaged parents in their children’s early years of education to teaching adult literacy in prisons.  Back in Australia, we moved often, following opportunities to help, whether supporting logging communities whose livelihoods were disrupted by conservation or guiding patients in psychiatric hospitals through complex systems.  Watching my parents meet complexity with compassion and action shaped my views on work, prosperity, and what real progress should look like.

My path was different from theirs.  The UN Sustainable Development Goals didn’t exist when I began my career, but the questions that drove Mum and Dad stayed with me.  However, I was drawn to business, which was something that my father in particular struggled with.  He wanted to solve society’s problems one person at a time.  I wanted to build organisations and solve practical problems at scale.  I’ve come to realise we have to do both.

I believe markets, when guided by purpose and accountability, are amongst the most powerful forces for good.  My passion is commerce with conscience: profits earned by creating value for customers, workers, and communities, and by narrowing the gap between those with opportunity and those without.  Strong, sustainable, economies are essential to build communities that look after everyone.  My tools are different, yet the destination is the same.  The work I do, and the teams I lead, must create positive impact, measured not just in financial returns but in the prosperity that drives cleaner energy, better education, fairer work, and more resilient communities.

That belief, that what we do should matter, shapes how I see the big questions of our time.  Those questions aren’t new, they’ve been with us for decades, often framed in fear rather than possibility.  In the year I was born, biologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, a book that shocked the world.  His warning was stark: humanity was on the brink of overwhelming the planet, facing famine and environmental collapse from unchecked population growth.  Ehrlich declared, “The battle to feed all of humanity is over.  In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death…”

But the world didn’t stand still.  He was wrong.  He underestimated the positive impact of economic prosperity.  Education, technology, rising incomes changed the trajectory, and today, the challenge has flipped.

Authors like Ehrlich matter, not just for capturing imagination, but for shaping real-world decisions.  When those voices get it wrong, the consequences are profound.  Policies were shaped, resources allocated, and societies steered, sometimes in directions far from reality and that we are still paying for today.

Because half a century on, we face a very different reality.  Instead of runaway growth, many nations now grapple with falling birth rates, ageing populations, and shrinking workforces.  The crisis we feared never came, but today’s challenges are just as urgent, and perhaps even more complex.

Some argue that fewer people is good, but the UN Sustainable Development Goals are tightly interconnected.  From sanitation to climate, from education to sustainability, and from a full belly to clean energy, you need economic prosperity.  And today’s prosperity depends on one critical link: work, workers, and whether we have enough people to sustain growth.

Later this century, the demographic impact will be stark.  Even now, as global population grows, the share of working-age people is shrinking, and that’s what really matters for prosperity.  Fertility rates have dropped below replacement levels, starting in the world’s richest countries but now spreading rapidly worldwide.  The UN projects global population will peak at 10.3 billion by the 2080s, then begin to decline.  More critically, the World Bank reports the working-age share peaked at 66% in 2015, and it’s been falling ever since.

Australia is a telling example.  Between 2011 and 2021, Australia’s birth rate fell by over 10%, yet the population grew nearly 15%, driven largely by immigration.  Households grew by almost 20%, outpacing population growth and straining housing and infrastructure.  Many developed nations follow the same pattern, using immigration to fill workforce gaps.  But globally, that’s not a sustainable solution.  As important as immigration is culturally, the richest countries can’t keep taking the best talent from the poorest without deepening inequality.

Looking ahead, the challenge is stark.  In the next 25 years, the global workforce share will drop from 64% to 57%.  Just to maintain today’s living standards, productivity must rise by at least 12%, before we even think about growth.

And here’s the paradox: For most of modern history, we feared too many people and not enough jobs.  Today, the tables have turned, the real risk is too few people to do the work our economies need.  A shrinking workforce isn’t just a statistic; it’s a hard limit on future prosperity.

For the first time, we need technology to take over jobs, not to cause unemployment, but to fill the gaps left by a shrinking workforce.  Automation and AI aren’t threats, they’re essential to sustain growth, support ageing societies, and deliver on the promise of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The fear that automation will destroy jobs is nothing new.  In 1962, US President Kennedy called automation “the major domestic challenge of the ’60s,” reflecting deep anxiety about machines replacing human labour.  Decade after decade, this obsession has resurfaced: each wave of progress brings fresh predictions of mass unemployment.  Yet history shows automation changes work but consistently creates new opportunities, raises living standards, and drives productivity.  The real challenge isn’t job loss; it’s harnessing technology so that prosperity is widely shared.

Many experts admit past technology waves created jobs and growth, but argue this time is different.  Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, warns: “AI could cut U.S.  entry-level jobs by half within five years.” Unlike past technology, which automated narrow tasks, AI’s speed and scope threaten roles once considered safe.  This fuels debate: will history repeat, or are we facing a fundamental shift in work itself?

The real question isn’t if AI will replace jobs, it’s whether we can harness it fast enough to sustain prosperity.  Because if we don’t, the gap between what economies need and what people can deliver will only widen.

Six years ago, I helped research, write and launch Deloitte Australia’s investigation into the future of work, called “why the future of work is human”.  While thousands of words had been written on this topic, most were opinion, not evidence.  That’s why we tackled it head-on with one of our most comprehensive, data-driven reports.

Our report was unashamedly Australian, looking at local data.  However, the outcomes can be extrapolated globally.  Overall, we found that the trend is toward creating more, not fewer, jobs.

The future of work isn’t just about coding or technical skills.  Our research shows that the fastest-growing roles are those requiring what we call “work of the head and heart”, cognitive, interpersonal, and creative skills.  We said then that by 2030, two-thirds of jobs will be soft-skill intensive.  These are the skills that are hardest to automate and most valuable to society.  They’re also the ones we’re most short of, which means our challenge isn’t just technological, it’s deeply human.  In 2025, nothing has happened to change this forecast.

Our analysis showed that while employment opportunities will continue to grow, the shortage of skills to fill those jobs is growing even faster.  Although AI can simplify many technical roles, the greatest shortages are at the intersection where digital meets human need.  Fascinatingly, the largest gap of all is in customer service which is right in this intersection.

My colleague and economist, John O’Mahony, says it best: “Where there is a problem, there is a job.” And after all, we aren’t running out of problems!  When you have a problem trusting financial institutions, you create more regulations, regulators, and compliance officers.  When you have a problem with complex government services, you add people to call centres and provide more hands-on support.  When you have a problem with an ageing population, you create more aged care workers.  Not only will we need more care, we’ll also need more support as more of us seek to be active in society for longer.

Using the data to get a better insight into the future matters.  When politicians are misdirected to believe all jobs are at risk, they assume that robots need to be taxed, as some have proposed, which would be a tax on productivity in a world where jobs are still being created.  When they think that entire communities will be permanently underemployed, they look to solutions like a universal basic income (UBI).  While a UBI might be appropriate for some societies, it should be based on the values and wealth of the country, not on a false assumption of permanent mass unemployment in the coming decades.

While we already know employers are seeking skills their people lack, what’s only now becoming clear is that these skills are now valued for a relatively short period.  Specifically, the data shows that the greatest gap between demand and supply is for people with three to five years of experience in a particular skill.  Those who obtained their skills over five years ago find that supply outstrips demand.

We need to rethink work and education to maximise human talent.  The old model of front-loading skills for a lifelong career no longer works.  Instead, we need continuous learning, micro-credentials, and on-the-job training that evolves with technology.  Universities must embrace lifelong education, governments must design new training policies, and businesses must invest in upskilling.  The way we learn before and while we work isn’t just being disrupted, it’s being reinvented, and that’s a good thing.

Navigating change isn’t easy for anyone, and there will be disruption.  But we’ve known this for a long time, Alvin Toffler described the challenges to the very way we live and work right back in 1970 in his bestselling book Future Shock.  He warned then that way to help society adapt is through policies which help people add to their skills and navigate different types of roles.

There are many challenges, but probably the biggest is in the fact that the very hierarchy of work itself is changing.  The structure of our industrial society, with working, middle and upper classes corresponding to blue-collar, white-collar and management, is gone.  In our rush to break down these barriers, we’ve underestimated the impact of technology and arguably created three new digital classes that correspond to the evolution of work.

There are now those that work for the machines, such as delivery and rideshare drivers who receive their schedule from apps.  But this group also includes warehouse pickers and packers following instructions from automated systems, food delivery couriers, gig economy cleaners and handymen dispatched by platforms, micro-task workers labelling data for AI, and even retail staff whose tasks are assigned by digital inventory systems.  Anyone acting as the arms and legs for digital services is in this category.  While often easy to get, this is the most insecure form of employment and is the most at risk from automation and further disruption.

There are those who work with the machines, roles where technology is a partner, not a replacement.  Think of teachers using adaptive learning platforms to personalise lessons, journalists leveraging AI to analyse vast datasets, architects collaborating with generative design software, and project managers orchestrating teams with digital tools.  In smart factories, skilled workers coordinate and troubleshoot automated systems, blending human judgment with machine precision.  This is the largest segment of the future workforce: people and technology working side by side, achieving more together than either could alone.

Then there are those who work on the machines, the creators and maintainers of our digital, AI, and robotic infrastructure.  These are the software developers, data scientists, robotics engineers, and IT specialists who design, build, and refine the systems that power our modern world.  As society debates how much influence this group should have and what regulation is needed, their work shapes the very foundation on which all other roles depend.

Just as many had ambitions to move between classes, there are increasing opportunities to move up the value chain of relationship with the machines.  With more skills needed to manage exceptions rather than processes, many of those that are scheduled by machines move to take roles smoothing the rough edges of the automated processes and work with the machines.  At the same time, those that are supported in their jobs by machines are more often being asked to codify their expertise through low-code and no-code solutions putting them at the top of the working pyramid.

Navigating this future towards security of work and a workforce large enough to meet demand are not just economic necessities, they are the foundation for achieving many of the UN Sustainable Development Goals that underpin this event.

Decent Work and Economic Growth (Goal 8) depend on strong economies powered by productive workers.  Quality Education (Goal 4) is essential to equip those workers with the skills they need.  Reduced Inequalities (Goal 10) and Sustainable Cities and Communities (Goal 11) rely on inclusive employment opportunities that keep societies stable and thriving.  And without robust economies, we cannot deliver Affordable and Clean Energy (Goal 7) or Climate Action (Goal 13).

In short, the future of work is inseparable from the future of sustainability.  If we get this right, by ensuring enough people, the right skills, and purposeful automation, we don’t just secure jobs; we secure progress for people and the planet.

Our future depends on choices we make now.  If we automate deliberately, invest in people, and design systems that are inclusive, efficient, and sustainable, we can achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, not as distant aspirations, but as practical realities.  A future where technology handles the routine, freeing us for work that demands creativity, empathy, and judgment.  Where prosperity is shared, and progress is measured not just in GDP but in opportunity and quality of life.  We can move from irrational fear of losing access to work through automation, while being realistic on the scale of disruption at an individual and societal level.  That means shifting from the anxieties of last century to realistic goals today, making the future of work not just human, but humane.