A key business leader is urging policymakers to shift their focus from specific policies to developing broad plans for the future economy.

Speaking at the National Press Club, the Business Council of Australia's (BCA) national president Catherine Livingstone warned that many of the jobs of today will not exist in the future as robots and computers take over.

"If 47 per cent of total US employment is at risk of being automated using artificial intelligence, we need to move urgently from a discussion about protecting the jobs of today, to creating the jobs of the future," she argued.

With 400,000 young Australians neither in study or work, and unemployment overall currently above 6 per cent, Ms Livingstone said the nation does not so much have a participation problem as a failure to match skills and training with current and future employment demand.

"Precision welders and robotics mechanics will be more useful in the growing advanced manufacturing sector than yet more law graduates for whom there are no jobs," she added.

In order for young people to gain practical experience and be more employable, Ms Livingstone argued that Australians must move away from the notion that work is something begun after a long period of study to a system where it is integrated with learning.

"Here, the philosophical shift is to move from a system which has a rigid discontinuity between education and work, to one which is more of a continuum, enabling simultaneous engagement in education and work for all from Year 11," she suggested.

"The discontinuity between education and work was perhaps relevant when, for most, formal education ended at age 15, only 10 per cent of students went on to university and degrees were three years in duration.

"It is not helpful now, with over 30 per cent of students at university and degrees of four and five years."

In addition, Ms Livingstone said that there needs to be greater emphasis on science, technology and maths education, given the likely jobs of the future.

She argued that computer coding, computational thinking, problem solving and design thinking must be taught alongside more traditional subjects.

"As it stands in Australia, however, the gap between the digital literacy of our young people and that of our competitor nations is increasing," Ms Livingstone warned.

"If we want increased productivity and participation, we need urgently to embark on a ten-year plan to close that gap.

"This will be essential to tackling structural youth unemployment."