Technology could kill 5 million jobs by 2020

Dubbing it the “fourth industrial revolution”, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has predicted that developments in technology will “lay the foundation for a revolution more comprehensive and all-encompassing than anything we have ever seen”.

WEF’s report coincides with the annual Davos meeting this week which has a theme of “The Fourth Industrial Revolution”.

According to a proper breakdown in Bloomberg, the rise of genetics will lead to 7 million jobs being lost and 2 million gained, resulting in 5 million job losses. Its findings correspond to projections by the UN’s International Labour Organisation of an increase in global unemployment of 11 million by 2020.

Administrative and office jobs will account for two-thirds of the losses, with “routine white-collar office functions at risk of being decimated”, and there will be gains in computer, mathematical, architecture and engineering-related fields.

Four out of ten young people believe machines will be able to do their jobs within a decade, an worldwide survey published on Monday has found. almost half of young workers surveyed in Western countries said their education did not prepare them to do their jobs.

A major goal of the report is to analyse the impact of key drivers of change and provide specific information on the relative magnitude of these expected changes by industry and geography, and the expected time horizon for their impact to be felt on job functions, employment levels and skills. The skills gap is especially pronounced in Europe, according to a poll of 9,000 16- to 25-year-olds in nine of the world’s biggest nations commissioned by Indian business and software services firm Infosys.

The Future of Jobs report is based on a survey of chief human resources officers and top strategy executives from companies across Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the USA, plus the ASEAN and GCC groups.

Nearly 80 per cent said they had to learn new skills not taught at school and that the rapid technology change forces them to constantly learn fresh skills. And “specialised sales representatives”, as “practically every industry will need to become skilled in commercialising and explaining their offerings to clients”, said the WEF.

With electronics and robotics taking over the bulk of work processes in many future-oriented enterprises, smart systems will certainly transform the economy, but will not be smart enough to prevent millions of jobs going down the drain, the study suggests.