With the advent of technology (robots, automation & artificial intelligence (AI)), fear and insecurity about the jobs especially of local workforces is on the rise. More people are getting concerned about the shift in the market due to the growing polarization of labor market opportunities. It’s consequent effects include unemployment, underemployment, and disparity of income. There’s no denying that technological innovation and automation have severely altered the employment landscape.
On one hand, people have lost millions of jobs to automation, and on the other hand, millions of jobs have also been created in the new digital world. The real question is, whether or not there will be enough new jobs left for the local workforce?
From China to Chicago, there’s a rigorous debate regarding the future of work and whether there will be enough job opportunities left for everyone to have a sufficient income. Artificial intelligence comes with a promise of higher productivity which ultimately leads to economic growth and related factors like increase in proficiency, safety, convenience, and time-efficiency.
Tip:
The local workforce markets are agitated whereas, the talent is underutilized
Unemployment and underemployment are on the rise around the globe. In the US and EU-15 (core European Union Countries), 285 million adults are not a part of any labor force and, a minimum of 100 million of those adults are yearning to work more. Around 30-40% of the working-age population worldwide is underutilized, that is, unemployed and underemployed. Ultimately, it translates into 850 million people in total just across the US, UK, Germany, India, China, and Japan.
The majority portion of untapped human potential is primarily of the unemployed population. The officially unemployed youth comprise 75 million people in total. Women mark the largest pool of untapped labor. Globally, fewer than 655 million women are economically more active than men.
Tech and automation have a high potential to largely affect the nature of today’s work. With disruption also comes an opportunity, for instance, various options for freelancing in the new digital world. Ever since the industrial revolution, most of today’s work activities can be easily automated, which has continually reshaped the workplace over the course of the past two centuries. The pace and scale at which the automation technologies are upgrading today, the amount of disruption that will be the result of this is largely without precedent.
Around 60% of all the occupations have a 30% potential to be automated, based on our current technologies. Consequently, most occupations will be altered, and more and more technology-based jobs will be created. People who are skilled well in technology will benefit while low skilled workers working with technology will benefit more in terms of work efficiency and output. At the same time, these workers may be challenged with wage pressure and competition, given the large number of similar low skilled people.
The adaptation of today’s automation technologies has around 50% potential to affect the economy worldwide, roughly marking 1.2 billion employees and $14.6 trillion in wages. Another factor to consider is the sizable differences that exist between the automation potential of different countries, which is defined by the structure of their economies, their wage scales, as well as the size and dynamics of their workforce.
With the advancement of technology, machines are constantly evolving and thus acquire more advanced human capabilities that match or exceed human abilities. However, the advancement of technology doesn’t translate into the deployment of automation in the workplace or through the automation of current jobs. The technical potential of artificial intelligence is just one of the primary factors to be considered. Another element is the expense that comes with the developing and deploying of both hardware and software for automation. The third factor is the supply and demand chain dynamics of the labor force, for instance, increased competency in the workplace and costs significantly less than automation, this would slow the pace of the adoption of automation in that workforce. Another factor is the benefits of automation beyond labor substitution, which comprises high work output efficiency, better quality, fewer errors, and advanced capabilities that surpass human ability.
Lastly, the regulatory and social issues, like the degree of acceptance of automation as per the country. The influence of these factors goes beyond the technical feasibility of automation; thus the incidence rate of whole jobs automation is less than other estimates as discussed above. According to the various research, it would most likely take at least two decades before the partial automation of today’s work activities as per the regions where the wage scale is relatively low.
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