By 2022, nearly one in 10 workers in India would be employed in jobs that do not even exist today.

A combination of globalisation, demographic changes, and new-age technologies will change the face of Indian industries, a December report (pdf) by management consulting firm Ernst & Young (EY) said. Even jobs that are around today will evolve and 37% of the workforce would be deployed in roles that’ll require radically changed skill sets.

The $160 billion IT-business process management (BPM) industry faces the biggest challenge in these changing times. Between 20% and 35% of the current employees in the sector are at risk of having their jobs wiped out by 2022.

Industry Workforce deployed in jobs that do not exist Workforce deployed in jobs with radically changed skills Workforce facing an existential threat to their jobs (for 2017) IT/BPM 10%-20% 60%-65% 20%-35% Automotive 5%-10% 50%-55% 10%-15% Textiles and apparel 5%-10% 35%-40% 15%-20% BFSI 15%-20% 55%-60% 20%-25% Retail 5%-10% 20%-25% 15%-20%

The report is based on questionnaires shared by EY, followed by interviews, with 130 business leaders, academics, and representatives from multiple industries.

The scope of IT-BPM

The pace of hiring is likely to slow down in India’s tech sector, which currently employs around 3.8 million people directly and 13 million indirectly, the report said. “It has a significant share of exports, which is expected to be affected as companies in advanced markets begin to deploy automation technologies in their processes, affecting jobs in the sector,” EY stated.

Compared to a historical growth rate of over 6%, hiring in India’s IT-BPM sector is expected to increase by only between 3% and 3.5% year-on-year to reach 4.5 million by 2022. Nearly three-quarters of these jobs would require new skill sets.

Almost all (97%) of the 29 IT-BPM sector leaders included in EY’s survey believe that current employees need to undergo re-skilling to tap into these evolving opportunities.

Of the 4.5 million openings created by 2022, between 450,000 and 900,000 would be deployed in the new jobs in IT-BPM. These new roles will open up mostly in areas like internet of things (IoT), machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI), almost all respondents said. Nine in 10 of them expect skills in big data, the cloud, robotics, and automation to be the next most sought-after in the next five years.

Most job positions coming up across industries outside of IT–BPM, too, lean towards technology-based roles.