Youth Must Build Adaptable Skills as AI Reshapes Job Market, UN Expert Says

A student sitting down to plan their career today faces a puzzle their parents never had to solve. The ground keeps shifting. By 2030—just four years from now—nearly four in ten of the skills workers currently rely on could be obsolete or transformed beyond recognition. The World Economic Forum's estimate lands like a weight on the question every young person asks: what should I actually learn to do?

World Youth Skills Day, observed each July 15th, exists to push this conversation forward. This year's theme—Skills for the Shared Future—cuts to the heart of the problem. How do you prepare for a labor market that will keep changing throughout your entire working life? Francesca Fanelli, who guides graduate students and recent job seekers through this exact terrain at Columbia University, has spent enough time in the trenches to know the answer is not what most people think it is.

The instinct is understandable. Some students, watching AI reshape industries, are pivoting toward skilled trades—plumbing, electrical work, carpentry—betting that hands-on work will prove harder to automate. Fanelli doesn't dismiss the appeal, but she warns against building a career strategy on fear. "The answer is not to search for an 'AI-proof' career," she says. Instead, she tells young people to start with what actually interests them, then build outward. The goal is not to find one safe path but to develop a broad set of transferable skills—the kind that move with you from one role to another, one industry to another, as the world of work continues its restless evolution.

What does matter, she argues, is learning to work alongside artificial intelligence rather than against it. AI literacy is no longer a nice-to-have; employers now expect it. But it's not about being able to use the tool—it's about using it well. That means knowing how to ask the right questions, writing clear prompts, and most critically, fact-checking what the system produces and deciding how to apply it. "You have to use it as an assistant rather than as a problem solver," Fanelli says. "You're still the problem solver." For job seekers, AI becomes a practical ally: analyzing job descriptions, identifying what employers actually want, tailoring applications, preparing for interviews. The catch is that the results depend entirely on the quality of the instructions you give it. And every application, no matter how much AI helped shape it, has to sound like you.

But learning to use AI is only one piece of the puzzle. The job search itself—the actual process of finding work—is where many recent graduates hit a wall of doubt. The numbers are sobering: in the United States, it takes job seekers an average of 6.6 months to land employment. That's half a year of applications, rejections, and the slow erosion of confidence. Fanelli sees this regularly in her students. "The whole process feels really overwhelming," she says. "Students are just feeling overwhelmed by the process and discouraged before they even start." Many graduates find themselves trapped in a strange paradox: they have strong academic credentials but worry they lack real-world experience, leaving them feeling simultaneously overqualified and underqualified. It's a particular kind of paralysis.

What Fanelli has learned is that this feeling often doesn't match reality. Graduates typically underestimate the value of what they've already built. Every job posting still asks for collaboration, communication, teamwork—skills most students develop throughout their education without realizing it. The work is not learning new things; it's learning to articulate what you already know in language an employer will understand.

As young people navigate this uncertain landscape, Fanelli offers one more piece of counsel: don't mythologize the dream job. "The dream job might not be exactly what you think it is," she says. Rather than searching for a role that checks every box, look for work that offers fulfillment in at least one way. And recognize that purpose doesn't have to come from work alone. Family, friendships, community, personal interests—these are all legitimate sources of meaning. Sometimes a job is simply financial stability, and that's enough. The future of work may be impossible to predict, but the future of a life is broader than any single career.