AWS report: Unlocking APAC’s Digital Potential

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has released a new report looking into the digital skills needed by APAC countries in the next five years.

Unlocking APAC’s Digital Potential: Changing Digital Skill Needs and Policy Approaches was commissioned by AWS and prepared by strategy and economics consulting firm AlphaBeta. The in-depth report analyses the digital skills applied by workers in their jobs today and the digital skills required by workforces over the next five years. The report focuses six APAC countries – Singapore, Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea.

The report highlights how digital skills are currently being applied, potential digital skill needs over five years, and provides workforce skills development recommendations. The report also identifies current skill levels and gaps for each country.

Key findings show gaps in current workforce

Almost 150 million workers in the six countries in the study apply digital skills in their jobs today, with cloud computing among the most commonly applied. The study found that 48% of the digital workers not applying cloud skills today believe cloud skills will be a requirement by 2025.

Four types of workers will need to gain new digital skills by 2025: current digitally skilled workers, current non-digitally workers, future workforce (today’s students), and those needing to reskill.

Skilling the workforce for the future

According to the report, the number of workers applying digital skills will increase more than five-fold from 149 million to 819 million workers in 2025. To achieve this level of skilling, the average worker will need to gain seven new digital skills by 2025, and 5.7 billion digital skill trainings will be required.

Cloud architecture design emerged as one of the five most “in-demand” skills by 2025 in all countries. Helping organizations transition from on premises-based to cloud-based infrastructure will also become more important.

Current digital workers will need to focus on training in advanced data skills including cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML).

Bridging APAC’s digital skills gaps with AWS

AWS helps bridge digital skills gaps with training programs for in-demand cloud computing skills – with more than 500 free, on-demand online courses.

AWS also provides training courses for workers looking to upskill or reskill in a range of topics like cloud architecture, cybersecurity, and data analytics.

Download the report: Unlocking APAC’s Digital Potential: Changing Digital Skill Needs and Policy Approaches