European countries dominated the 2024 IMD World Talent Ranking.
Didier Marti | Moment | Getty Images
For the eleventh consecutive year, Switzerland topped the list as the world’s most talent-competitive country, according to the IMD 2024 World Talent Ranking, signaling its strong and stable talent pool despite the rapidly changing global work landscape.
The ranking measures how economies around the world perform when it comes to sustaining their pool of talent. This year, the list was developed through a combination of survey answers and hard data from the IMD World Competitiveness Center and external sources across 67 economies globally.
This data is broken down into three buckets: investment in and development of homegrown talent, appeal (the extent to which a country taps into the overseas talent pool) and readiness (the availability of skills and competencies in the talent pool), according to the report.
These are the 10 most talent-competitive economies globally:
- Switzerland
- Singapore
- Luxembourg
- Sweden
- Denmark
- Iceland
- Norway
- Netherlands
- Hong Kong
- Austria
European countries dominated this year’s ranking, landing in eight of the top ten positions. Two economies in Asia also made the list with Singapore and Hong Kong landing at second and ninth place, respectively.
The United States, however, did not make the top 10 and fell six spots to 21st place this year. Notably, the U.S. also fell from second in 2020 to 14th in 2024 in the appeal category, impacted by the country’s cost of living and collected personal income tax rate.
The U.S. also fell in the readiness category to 32nd this year. The country was rated as below average in language skills or the availability of language skills to meet the needs of enterprises, landing at 47 out of 67 economies globally.
Switzerland remains at the forefront of talent competitiveness, topping the list since the ranking’s inception in 2014. The country dominates on investment and development, as well as the appeal factor.
The European country tops the list in several criteria such as quality of life, health infrastructure, university education, existence of a statutory minimum wage, ability to attract foreign highly skilled personnel and more.
Singapore is also a standout winner in this year’s list. The city-state’s “rise from 18th position in 2014 to second place this year may pose a challenge to Swiss domination in the near future,” according to the report.
Singapore’s steady rise is driven by the readiness of its talent pool, rated as No. 1 among countries in the ranking. The country also shows the highest absence of discrimination, and ranks first when it comes to labor force growth, the availability of skilled labor and the availability of finance skills, according to the report.
While AI can bring unparalleled efficiency and productivity, it also threatens widespread job displacement, particularly in sectors that are dependent on routine tasks and automation.
José Caballero
senior economist at the IMD World Competitiveness Center
The impact of AI on the global talent landscape
The 2024 WTR report, titled “The socio-economic implications of AI in the workplace,” also spotlights the impact that artificial intelligence has had on the global talent landscape.
“The rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming industries and reshaping the global economy in unprecedented ways, creating both opportunities and challenges for talent competitiveness,” senior economist at the IMD World Competitiveness Center José Caballero wrote in the report.
“While AI can bring unparalleled efficiency and productivity, it also threatens widespread job displacement, particularly in sectors that are dependent on routine tasks and automation,” said Caballero.
Notably, this year’s report found that in Japan, Thailand, Singapore, the U.K. and Canada, “senior executives were found to consider AI to be most visible in the workplace by the way it is replacing people. In addition, discrimination was found to be increasing in these economies,” according to an IMD blog post.
“Incorporating AI into the workforce can introduce new forms of discrimination, such as biased algorithms, that may reinforce existing inequalities and have broader social impacts on marginalized communities,” said Caballero in the report.
For example, the report found that women’s employment is more than twice as likely to be affected by automation (7.9%) compared to men (2.9%) in high-income countries.
Ultimately, while high-income economies are more likely to see disruption and increased discrimination from AI adoption in the short-term compared to low-income economies, “they are also expected to obtain greater overall benefits,” according to the report.
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