The World Economics Forum (WEF) has published findings from a ‘Future of Jobs’ survey they conducted recently:
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- 803 companies were surveyed, collectively employing more than 11.3 million workers across 27 industry clusters and 45 economies from all world regions
- Questions covered macro and technology trends, their impact on jobs, their impact on skills, and the workforce strategies businesses plan to use.
The following is our summary of the job changes they expect over the next five years given:
- Tight labour markets are prevalent in high-income countries
- Low and lower-middle-income countries continue to see higher unemployment than before the COVID-19 pandemic
- Labour-market outcomes are diverging, as workers with only basic education and women face lower employment levels
- Real wages are declining as a result of an ongoing cost-of-living crisis
- Changing worker expectations about the quality of work are becoming more prominent.
The ‘Top 10 ‘Job and Skill Changes’ expected globally over the next five years are:
- Technology adoption will remain a key driver of business transformation:
- Over 85% of organisations identify increased adoption of new technologies and broadening digital access as the trends most likely to drive transformation in their organisation.
- Broader application of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) standards within their organisations will also have a significant impact.
- The largest job creation and destruction effects will come from environmental, technology and economic trends:
- The strongest net job-creation effect will be driven by investments that facilitate the green transition of businesses, the broader application of ESG standards and supply chains becoming more localised.
- The three key drivers of expected net job destruction are slower economic growth, supply shortages and the rising cost of inputs, and the rising cost of living for consumers.
- Within technology adoption, big data, cloud computing and AI feature highly on likelihood of adoption:
- Digital platforms and apps are the technologies most likely to be adopted with 86% of companies expecting to incorporate them into their operations in the next five years.
- E-commerce and digital trade are expected to be adopted by 75% of businesses.
- The impact of most technologies on jobs is expected to be a net positive over the next five years:
- Big data analytics, climate change and environmental management technologies, and encryption and cybersecurity are expected to be the biggest drivers of job growth.
- Agriculture technologies, digital platforms and apps, e-commerce and digital trade, and AI are all expected to result in significant labour-market disruption.
- Employers anticipate a structural labour market churn of 23% of jobs in the next five years:
- This is an aggregate measure of emerging jobs added and declining jobs eliminated.
- A higher-than-average churn is expected in the supply chain, transportation, media, entertainment and sports industries – and lower-than-average churn in manufacturing, retail and wholesale of consumer goods.
- The human-machine frontier has shifted, with businesses introducing automation into their operations at a slower pace than previously anticipated:
- Organisations today estimate that 34% of all business-related tasks are performed by machines, with the remaining 66% performed by humans.
- Artificial intelligence is expected to be adopted by nearly 75% of surveyed companies and is expected to lead to high churn – with 50% of organisations expecting it to create job growth and 25% expecting it to create job losses.
- Specific areas of job growth and decline relative to their size today:
- The fastest-growing roles are driven by technology, digitalisation and sustainability:
- Most are technology-related roles – AI and machine learning specialists top the list, followed by sustainability specialists, business intelligence analysts and information security analysts, renewable energy engineers, solar energy installation and system engineers.
- The fastest-declining roles are driven by technology and digitalisation:
- The majority are clerical or secretarial roles, with bank tellers and clerks, postal service clerks, cashiers and ticket clerks, and data entry clerks expected to decline fastest.
- Large-scale job growth is expected in:
- Education – especially vocational education teachers and university and higher education teachers.
- Agriculture – especially agricultural equipment operators.
- Trade – especially digitally-enabled roles such as E-commerce specialists, digital transformation specialists, and digital marketing and strategy specialists.
- Largest losses are expected in administrative, accounting and record-keeping roles plus traditional security, factory and commerce roles – driven mainly by digitalisation and automation.
- The fastest-growing roles are driven by technology, digitalisation and sustainability:
- Analytical and creative thinking remain the most important skills for workers:
- Analytical thinking is considered a core skill by more companies than any other skill
- Creative thinking, another cognitive skill, ranks second
- Empathy is still vital when working with others
- Active listening (an oft ignored management skill) when working with others.
CONCLUSION:
Clearly, big changes at work are not only expected but afoot – whether they will occur as expected remains uncertain despite the weight of opinion shown by this WEF survey, much surely due to absorbing global optimism about new AI technology now sweeping the globe, not practical experience.
We belong to the ‘J curve’ camp when considering likely benefits of AI over the next few years i.e. in these early days, few if any major benefits can be expected as people and processes employ the new AI applications alongside and within old systems – it’s only later, when the new fully takes over from the old, that major benefits will emerge and grow.
But how much later?
Time will tell.