It is predicted that within 50 years a robot or an intelligent algorithm will be doing humans work. Experts hold vastly different opinions with regard to the dramatic impact of the changes in the job structures. Others claim that, thanks to digitalisation and automatisation, many employees whose jobs are at high risk will not be replaced completely, even if the technical advances would allow a replacement.
CREATION OF NEW TYPES OF JOBS
Data Scientist
One example of a newly created job is that of the data scientist. Their task is to structure huge data volumes collected by big data analyses. This includes the research of both the data and their structure or origin, to supplement incomplete data sets and to create links between abstract data sets. The data scientist role has been in existence only for a few years and will gain importance in the future.
Crowd Worker
A field of work of growing significance is that of crowd workers. They are freelancers who offer their skills via their computers on online platforms. Crowd working is a symbol of a changing world of work for white-collar workers in the gig economy.
Simple Physical Work
New high-end jobs will be created, but there will be an increase in the low-wage, non-routine sector as well. There are positive spill over effects from high-tech employment to low-tech employment, especially in the form of in-person services.
JOBS TO BE ELIMINATED
High-routine occupations
Almost every job where an employee sits in front of a computer screen and processes and interprets data is at high risk.
Simple Physical Work/Manual Work
In the future, simple work mostly carried out by mere physical strength will be increasingly, but never completely, performed by machines. The decisive criterion remains the level of routine. The efficient use of a machine rather than a human employee is possible only if the process can be made independent and is repeated with certain regularity.
Dismissal of Employees as a result of digitisation
If retraining the employees is out of the question or if the technical reorganisation will reduce the number of employees to such extent that not all employees can be retrained, collective redundancies in the fields of work listed above, by way of example, will be the inevitable consequence. The ability to effect such collective redundancies may be constrained by labour law but the rules vary from country to country.
JOBS IN DEMAND
IT Management and Science
IT and science professions, in particular, as well as media science and humanistic professions, will initially benefit from the increase in investments and the associated growth in the area. In the next ten years, the IT service sector will experience the greatest boom. Typically, high-paying occupations are corporate managers, physical, mathematical, and engineering professionals, life science and health professionals, in other words, typical jobs related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics that can be found in parts of both manufacturing and services.
Teaching Professions
The sector ‘teaching professions’ covers not only the areas of school, university and vocational training, but in particular, further and advanced training for adults. This professional group
benefits from the need of companies to spend more money on the education of employees and the achievement of further key qualifications for new and existing employees. More education leads to more jobs for teachers even if there are fewer attendance seminars, more webinars and more online workshops for Generation Y.
Humanistic, Social Science, Media Science and Artistic Professions
Creative professions have benefited in all respects in recent decades, and humans in these professions will not be replaced by machines in the future either. Whether they are superstars with their music, artists with their works or authors and actors with their literary or cinematic works, or simply humanities and media scholars, increasing demand is forecast for their professions.
Doctors and Nursing Staff
Doctors and nursing staff are far from being replaced. However, in this sector too, technical possibilities can lead to staff reduction In some cases, machines are able to work faster, more accurately, and more efficiently than the best humans. It will no longer be possible to imagine hospitals without robots in the future. Additionally, software technology based on artificial intelligence, called ‘IBM Watson Health’, will help doctors to diagnose various illnesses by reconciling patient data with medical knowledge collected in a cloud.
It is clear that both blue and white-collar sectors will be affected by a potential loss of jobs and that the digitalisation (and automation) of services is a global phenomenon. This phenomenon, however, is a far-reaching and diversified field of advisory services, particularly with regard to labour law. It would be desirable for the future laws, which will hopefully be secured at the international level by uniform standards, to be geared to the technological developments and the increased need for flexibility.
Reference: Artificial Intelligence and Their Impact on The Workplace IBA Global Employment Institute – April 2017