It’s a fast-moving world, and few places are changing more quickly than the work environment and the platform economy. Each Friday, in this column, we’ll attempt to connect some dots, blending the interviews and conversations we’re doing here at Reinvent with the news that’s breaking around us. We hope the deep-dive conversations conducted at our events, in our studios, and over video online provide some key insights into the larger issues shaping the world, and give you a thoughtful weekend reflection about a world that’s moving briskly into the future.

Life used to be simple: go to school, get good grades, learn a trade, start your career, retire in 40 years.

That’s no longer true. As the demands of the workplace change, new skills are going to be needed—or else you might find yourself out on the street, long before you’re ready to leave the workforce.

In the next eight years, an estimated 1.4 million Americans may lose their jobs because of tech-driven disruption, according to a report by the World Economic Forum and Boston Consulting released this week.

The report analyzed 1,000 U.S. jobs that account for 96 percent of national employment, and its findings are alarming. The most frightening reveal: almost one million Americans will see their occupations vanish entirely by 2026. They’ll need to train for a career change immediately, and/or won’t find work that pays comparably. Without new skills, the report says, as many as 575,000 of those who jobs are affected — 41 percent — will have little chance of finding other work.

“Economic value creation is increasingly based on the use of ever higher levels of specialized skills and knowledge, creating unprecedented new opportunities for some while threatening to leave behind a significant share of the workforce,” the report notes. That scenario is already in motion: In a survey of OECD countries, more than one in four adults reported a mismatch between their current skill sets and the qualifications required to do their jobs.

Rinne: Imagine the future, then move toward it.

This so-called “reskilling crisis” is clanging alarm bells in every corner of the workforce. “The need for adaptation and reskilling and upskilling is increasingly important to workers everywhere, whether they’re independent workers or employees of wherever they happen to be in the world,” said April Rinne, a global authority on tech-enabled business models, during a Future of Work roundtable hosted by Reinvent.

Some of these shifts will speed up regional, generational, and gender-based economic disparities that are already in motion. More than half of the jobs affected belong to women. Says the report: “The changing nature of work and the extent to which opportunities for finding stable, meaningful work that provides a good income have increasingly become fractured and polarized, favouring those fortunate enough to be living in certain geographies and to be holding certain in-demand skills.”

Those jobs most vulnerable include many blue-collar positions, like assembly-line workers, customer service representatives, cashiers, and truck drivers.

In the end, however, no one is e safe. The WEF report notes: “Even among people formerly working good jobs, disruptive technological and socio-economic forces threaten to swiftly outdate the shelf life of people’s skillsets and the relevance of what they thought they knew about the path to social mobility and rewarding employment.”

An upside to the downfall

There is also a silver lining to the changes. The technology that is creating such havoc in the workplace can create many new job opportunities: the Gartner research firm predicts AI will also create 2.3 million jobs by 2020. But the skills needed to thrive in the more digital and entrepreneurial 21st century workforce are substantively different than those required in the past. The jobs of the future will require not just more cognitive skills, but also more creativity, collaboration, critical thinking and social skills, such as coaching. Developing these so-called “soft skills” could lift wages and increase the range of job transition options.

Some new positions might require combinatorial sets, as well as deeper expertise in specific areas. “Many jobs are becoming hybridized, so being able to rapidly reskill is increasingly important,” said Tom Ogletree, director of social impact and external affairs at General Assembly, which offers online classes in continuing education. Many biotech companies, for instance, are developing products that integrates components like AI, VR, big data, and blockchain technologies.

Ogletree: There are many new in-demand new skills. Here are some options.

Companies, policymakers, educators take note

An active push toward reskilling doesn’t simply mean learning how to code. The report also lays out more than a dozen “job pathways” that show what options await those whose jobs are in danger but whom successfully gain new skills. See the chart below.

Disappearing jobs require workers to think of new target jobs. Source: World Economic Forum

The affected workers aren’t the only ones that need to take notice. According to the report: “For companies, reskilling and upskilling strategies will be critical if they are to find the talent they need and to contribute to socially responsible approaches to the future of work. For policy-makers, reskilling and retraining the existing workforce are essential levers to fuel future economic growth, enhance societal resilience in the face of technological change and pave the way for future-ready education systems for the next generation of workers.”

Employers need to invest more money into their training and development programs. Unless they push for a serious effort to reskill their workers and bridge them into new jobs, employers won’t have the talent they need to chase their dreams.

A silver lining

All is not doom and gloom. The WEF reports that with reskilling the average worker in the US economy would have 48 viable job transitions. Of these, 24 jobs would lead to higher wages. At-risk workers who retrain for an average of two years could receive an average annual salary increase of $15,000 — and business would be able to find talent for jobs that may otherwise remain unfilled.

The WEF also announced a new tech-reskilling drive targeting one million workers over the next three years. Dubbed the IT Skills Initiative, the effort centers on a web training portal, SkillSET, which just launched.

The bigger picture, though, is that supplying the skills needed in these new sectors will require further improvements in the education system, with a focus on lifelong learning. There will be a critical need for educators to align the educational and learning opportunities of today with economic realities of tomorrow. Young people who are going through education now may end up in jobs that do not currently exist.

All of this adds up to some busy years ahead, with concerted efforts by businesses, workers, educators and politicos to think hard and long about a coordinated reskilling plan that build bridges for workers to new jobs. “The future of work is not predetermined,” says Rich Lesser, Global Chief Executive Officer and President, The Boston Consulting Group. “ It is in our hands to proactively manage the changes underway and build the kind of future that maximizes opportunities for people to fulfill their potential across their entire lifetimes.”

This story was published as part of Reinvent’s Future of Work series, underwritten by Intuit.

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A Million Workers Face an Uncertain Future Unless They Learn New Skills