As one generation changes another, so do professions. The demand for some occupations disappear and, on the contrary, there are always new ones introduced to the market.
Today, as job market shift is very dependent on smart technologies, both employers and employees have questions about technologies’ impact on their businesses. We hope this article will reduce your ambiguity.
Job market change is inevitable
The job market is always in a change because of socio-economic factors, global political decisions, demographic growth and other conditions. Mentioned things alter our needs and living/working methods, thus resulting in the shift of the whole labour market.
For instance, the First Industrial Revolution – the introduction of machines – thoroughly eliminated the importance of some previously popular jobs requiring hand production methods. However, the Revolution also created plenty of employment possibilities with better payments and favourable working conditions.
Though it might have been hard for some workers to integrate at first, the ones who accepted new working methods and agreed to make a small shift in their daily-life activities (e.g. acquiring a new skill, changing their sleeping routine or commuting to work) ended up being more satisfied and financially stable than they have ever been.
What kind of technologies?
Science fiction lovers cannot rid of the thought that artificial minds will take over our jobs. World Economic Forum 2018 report, representing the distribution of technologies that are seeing their way to our workplaces, can calm them. Humanoid robots will not be the business’ key, and automation will not change human beings; on the contrary – technologies will help us.
It is clear from the figures that Big Data, online markets, IoT, machine learning and Cloud computing will be the leading technologies driving our businesses towards. The sooner executives get in touch with these and start using them, the more quickly their businesses adapt, grow and achieve.
According to a recent McKinsey analysis, even though there are many jobs to be automated and made more dependant on technologies in the future, there is just a minority of professions that can be thoroughly automated: “Given currently demonstrated technologies, very few occupations – less than 5 percent – are candidates for full automation “.
Moreover, according to a paper by Harvard economist James Bessen, out of 270 jobs listed in the 1950 US Census, just one profession – elevator operator – disappeared because of automation in the past 70 years. Many (232) of those 270 mentioned professions still exist today because automation is not eliminating entire professions; it just replaces human labour and helps them to work more efficiently.
Automation has the potential to benefit our businesses in achieving outcomes that go beyond human capabilities by minimising our efforts and resources for the same output. However, technologies cannot do everything on their own – it requires the contribution of us, humans. If we want this technology and human collaboration to work out, we need to start adding technologies to our plans right now.