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re:Invent 2025: Pearson and ServiceNow on the Future of Work Powered by Agentic AI and People
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📖 re:Invent 2025: AWS re:Invent 2025 - Agents of Change: AI & People Powering the Future of Work (AIM128)
This video discusses the impact of agentic AI on the labor market, based on the Workforce Skills Forecast report co-authored by Pearson and ServiceNow. It indicates that approximately 8 million roles will be disrupted in the US alone by 2030, while 8 out of 10 surveyed countries will experience labor shortages, with the technology industry expected to grow by 36%. In financial services, up to 15% of the workforce in Japan could be affected. Key insights emphasize that if AI is the engine, learning is the fuel, and the skill of "learning to learn" will be paramount. Demand for agentic AI skills is soaring, while governance skills remain flat. It is highlighted that 12-15 hours of capacity in working hours will be freed up over the next five years, and roles will evolve.
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Main Content
The Impact of Agentic AI Revealed by the Workforce Skills Forecast Report: 8 Million Roles Disrupted and New Job Opportunities
Alright, let's get started. My name is John Rogers. I am a client partner with Pearson, and I have the pleasure of managing both the AWS and ServiceNow relationships. We did about six months of research, concluded earlier this year, and created a report. This is the Workforce Skills Forecast report that we did in conjunction with ServiceNow. What we did in this report was use machine learning, economic analysis, and predictive analytics to really look at, from a workforce perspective, not only the market changes, but how agentic AI and related technologies are impacting roles at the task level, how they're impacting industries, how they're impacting countries, and then we were able to aggregate that up to the macroeconomic. It's a really fascinating report.
I'd like to introduce my two colleagues next to me. One is Ian Gott. He is the Senior Director of AI, Data, and Analytics Sales for ServiceNow. And Ray Murray from Pearson. Hello, everyone. He is our CRO and SVP at Pearson. What we want to do today is really dig into how these technologies are redefining the world of work, how we as individuals can partner with AI, and how organizations must begin to rethink how they partner and work with the impact of AI.
So let's kick it off. I'm going to start with Ray. What are some of the key trends that you saw in the research that sparked a reaction for you? Yeah, thanks. Thank you, JR. First, let me just say it's fantastic to be here at AWS re:Invent and to have the opportunity to talk about powering the future of work. I find it slightly ironic that we're sitting in front of the people who essentially build and provide the tools for how we're going to power the future of work, and you and I are on the more theoretical side of things. But it's great to be here. And big shout out to Ian from ServiceNow as well. They're an organization that's doing so much to bring products and services that truly reshape how we work and make our daily lives very fulfilling.
So the headline from the research is that agentic AI is not an IT upgrade. This is a massive, massive tectonic shift to every economy around the world, like we've never seen before. And it will disrupt every industry, but not necessarily in a linear way. By 2030, we showed about 8 million roles, in the research, in America alone, that would be disrupted. And that disruption will happen at the skill level. It'll happen by augmenting those skills and redefining the roles.
And the paradox is that while AI is disrupting at a very fast pace, the need for skills is actually growing at an even faster pace. And when we look at the research, in 8 of the 10 countries that we studied, there will actually be more jobs than there are workers to do them. And that's fantastic news. It's fantastic news for all of us. It's fantastic news for everyone at re:Invent, because that's really job security. So the takeaway at a macro level is that AI is not reducing the demand for technology talent itself. It's actually fueling that going forward.
Yeah, thanks, Ray. And Ian, can you tell us from an industry perspective what you're seeing? That was the big macro picture. Can you give us some more detail? Yeah, absolutely. Within financial services, we'll see a greater impact in this type of industry. For instance, in Japan, up to 15% of the workforce in this particular industry could be impacted, and similar trends may be seen across the US and other parts of the world. As we get into other industries like retail, we'll see disproportionate impacts in countries like India and the UK.
When it comes to inventory management and customer service, you're probably already seeing some of it in terms of how AI is recommending products or how you're checking out when you're doing online shopping.
Other areas like professional services, technology, and other industry segments will also be impacted, but it's about the augmentation of how AI will help further these jobs and roles. And finally, when it comes to roles and knowledge workers in Singapore, we found that these knowledge workers are very advanced. They're bringing AI into their daily jobs as part of what they do, and really accelerating their productivity and impact. And we'll see that trend evolve across the world for people who not only learn and use it, but invest their time to do more with it.
Yeah, one of the most surprising things for me is that in the research that we did, there were only two countries that were going to be oversupplied. So the majority of them, there wasn't going to be enough workers to do the jobs that we needed to meet our GDP targets, but there were only two exceptions, and that was Germany and Japan. They're going to be oversupplied in the coming years. But, and this is really good for all of you in this room, if you look at the technology industry, it's still something like 36% growth, spiking up. So you're in the right place, you're in the right industry. You're in an industry that's on the rise.
Three Recommendations for Organizations and Individuals to Survive: Learning, AI Collaboration, and Governance
Now, let's move away a little from the theoretical and economic discussions and shift to something a bit more applicable to the audience here. Ray, can you give us some of your top three recommendations, if you will, on how to navigate these changes being thrown at us through agentic AI, both at an organizational and individual level?
So, let me start with the summary and try to paint a slightly bigger picture. If AI is the engine, then learning is truly the fuel. And without the fuel, without the power, the engine essentially stays dormant and doesn't move. At Pearson, we understand that learning is a multiplier effect of power throughout life. It compounds like interest; it's not a one-and-done thing. For most learners, at a fundamental level, learning lifts people out of poverty. It allows people to lead healthier and happier lives. As you know, when we learn, we generally become happier. And in the age of AI, that multiplier effect of power is truly exponential. Because, in reality, in the future, how you learn, how deeply you learn, how broadly and quickly you learn, that is the essence. How fast you progress, how deeply you learn, how continuously you learn, these are the skills that will be needed in the future, and they will become a superpower.
Before AI, essentially, we learned to earn. So it was cyclical. You went to school, then you went to work, and then you earned money. Now we're seeing a huge shift. We're actually learning to learn. And those people who can keep pace, and organizations, because essentially people are organizations, they have to know how to learn, how to learn faster, how to retain, and how to keep up with the growth of technology and the growth happening within AI.
And at Pearson, we have that science, that pedagogy. We essentially have decades of accumulated learning about how people learn, and through our collaboration with AWS and ServiceNow, we are building tools and products that are essentially embedded in the workflow, and they provide continuous feedback. And the reality is that organizations that view learning as an extracurricular activity, something not actually embedded in the workflow, will essentially be left behind. So truly, thinking about learning, investing in learning, and advancing it as a continuous practice embedded in daily habit tools, is something that every organization must adopt, and they must adopt it very, very quickly. And they must do it ubiquitously across the entire organization, across all business units.
Yeah, so you're effectively saying the skill of learning is the most critical skill you can have in this world. And that's absolutely right, and that's fantastic, and certainly a perspective from Pearson focusing on lifelong learning and so on. Let's take a look through a bit of a technical lens. Can you answer that same three recommendations, if you will, from a ServiceNow perspective, for organizations and individuals to navigate this, but seen through a technical lens?
Yes, absolutely. At ServiceNow, we say we make AI work for people. And it starts with embracing AI and working with AI in a way that augments what we do day in and day out. Embracing it in the form of not just learning and orchestrating it, but setting goals, learning what good means in terms of the data that's being put out there, and really embracing a trusted end-to-end approach, building it in a way that has valuable impact. The human element will continue to be involved in this. It's not just about technology or agents.
Human elements such as creativity, adaptability, and complex thinking must be maintained. And that brings us to the third point, which is governance as a guardian. All of us are guardians when we leverage AI and deal with data within our organizations. This is not just a burden placed on the C-suite or chief risk officers. We all handle that data, and we need to handle it responsibly. And we need to think not just about what we're putting in, but what's coming out, and how we apply it, use it for decision-making, and drive the outcomes we're trying to achieve. In terms of the balance between innovation and the capabilities gained from learning, it's the combination of skills that people are looking for. This will be valuable as the workforce evolves.
Yeah, that's really interesting. One other thing that I noted was when you start looking at the demand for agentic AI skills, anyone who's used a web crawler, anyone who's looking at that skill base, can see an unbelievable hockey stick curve at this point. But when you actually go and look at it, and you overlay that with governance skills, there's absolutely no increase. So this agentic AI skill base is shooting up, but anything governance related to agentic AI governance is completely flat. So if anyone's looking for a new job, I think that gap's going to have to be closed at some point. It might be an interesting area to move into.
Pearson's Practical Examples and Future Outlook: AI-Powered Education Revolution and Human Enhancement
Okay, so we've delved into the individual level, and we've looked at organizations, and the macro level. Ray, how does this impact you, and how do you see it? Let's make it a bit more personal. Can you give us some insight from a team perspective, and from Pearson's perspective, about the internal workings of our own company?
Yeah, Jay, I'll tell you, at Pearson, AI has been part of our DNA for the last 18 months. And we've been very fortunate to have leaders who are very keen for Pearson to be at the forefront of driving education through AI. And so every employee at Pearson has access to AI through the tools they use on a daily basis, which is brilliant. And we also have KPIs and personal goals to be trained and certified in AI.
After all, we're an education and credentialing organization, so we prefer to be customer zero before rolling it out to customers. And we prefer to drink our own champagne, or eat our own dog food, whichever way you want to say it. And going forward, what we want to do is essentially leverage the power of AI, in collaboration with partners like AWS and ServiceNow, to deliver customized learning methods, AI tutors, and digital coaches within the workflow. And we want to be an organization that revolutionizes education and ensures that no one is left behind. This is a big part, and AI can actually make that happen and help scale it.
So there's a lot of things that we've thought about in the past, and of course there's the innovation aspect. How does it impact our operations, customer service, HR, and finance? We're advancing all these changes, and what's happening there is that we're eliminating the monotonous, robotic aspects of tasks that none of us really want to do. And AI is very good at that. But at the same time, it gives our employees the space and opportunity to do what AI is essentially not good at. That's the human aspect, primarily soft skills, agility, leadership, communication, and all of those things.
We are also fully committed, going forward, to being part of a circle of organizations that are not just investing in AI for cost savings, but actually to augment human labor, enable people to be more human, and execute the elements we talked about earlier.
Thank you, Ray. Ryan, do you have anything to add? Yeah, I mean, when we talk about the technical side, and what we're doing at Pearson and AWS, it comes down to models, AI, and the choice of AI models you want to use. For example, how we've built the integration with ServiceNow's Now Assist platform and AWS as a hyperscaler option for our customers. It's a great collaboration to ensure customers have the approach, governance, and security they need to move their use cases forward.
Excellent. Thank you. So, in summary, there are a few points I heard. One is learning to learn. This is a key skill that everyone needs to get used to, right? Technology is now advancing at a faster pace than our skills, so we need to adapt to that. My grandfather had only one job in his life and worked for 40 years. My father, I think, had two or three. I'm Generation X and I've had five jobs, right? But we're seeing that increasing even more. But now there's a new twist. It's not just that I'm in one role, doing the same role across multiple different companies. It's that my role is starting to continuously evolve.
Now, for all the ecosystem roles in the audience, data leads, architects, and so on, I can tell you a little more about what we've discovered. Over the next five years, our analysis indicates that the impact of these technologies will free up approximately 12 to 15 hours of your workday, that is, capacity. So, unless we all switch to a three-day work week, which I don't think will happen anytime soon, your jobs will evolve. Roles will be integrated. You'll start to be asked for new things. So, be prepared for that.
Learning to learn is the first. The second is about governance, right? Everyone has to take responsibility for governance. And the third is really that all of us are in this together. This is already here. It's not something we can put off for a little while. We are already in the midst of it. So I'm excited.
Let me just briefly mention. We created this report, and it has had a huge impact worldwide, and over the past three months, we've actually released 10 individual reports per country. So there's one for every country. Both Pearson and ServiceNow are using this to have dialogues with governments, dialogues with educational institutions we talk to, and also dialogues with commercial enterprises. So this is a great way to start conversations about their skill strategies, and to have data that actually represents that. It's publicly available on the ServiceNow website. To find it, just type in Workforce Skills Forecast Report. And it's available for free to everyone in this room.
Okay, we have a little more time, but I'll let you go a little early. Thank you all very much. It's been a lot of fun. I know your time is precious, so thank you for spending it with us. Thank you all very much. Thank you.
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