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More jobs are coming from new tech but are we ready for them?

Governments need to step in to reskill human capabilities and sensitise current and prospective workers about market needs.

The World Economic Forum's The Future of Jobs Report 2018, released last week, estimates that "75 million jobs may be displaced by a shift in the division of labour between humans and machines." The report estimates indicate that 133 million new jobs may emerge in the workplace of the future as machines partner with humans to accomplish tasks. These disruptions may have particular significance for Asian countries - many of them are transitioning from low income to middle income, and have substantial youth populations that desperately need employment. What's the proper response?
Let's review the WEF's key findings first. The report finds that omnipresent high-speed mobile Internet, Big Data, AI, and the cloud will dominate the world of work.
As a result, 50 per cent of employers anticipated a reduction in their full-time workforce by 2022 as machines take over larger share of tasks currently done by humans. The WEF estimates that about 71 per cent of task hours across 12 industries are being done by people today. That number, however, will fall to 58 per cent in the next four years.
Robots will not merely take over mechanical functions, but even jobs that require intrinsically human characteristics are at risk. For instance, customer service, advising, and decision-making functions could be performed by machines equipped with voice recognition, natural language processing, and predictive analysis capabilities. The WEF predicts 30 per cent of communications tasks are likely to be done by machines compared with 27 per cent for decision-making jobs.
What does this mean? Accountants, lawyers, administrative workers, managers, insurance clerks, factory workers may face heightened risks of redundancy threatening current notions about desirable and safe employment.
The adoption of robots is also growing with one in three employers saying they would deploy them in many sectors - especially non-humanoid robots in a variety of domains involving physical labour. Crucially, the WEF found that "employers in the Financial Services industry are most likely to signal the planned adoption of humanoid robots in the period up to 2022."
There is other evidence about the rise of robots in Asia. A report on the Future of Work: Regional Perspectives, issued by the Asian Development Bank, EBRD, African Development Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank found that "the stock of robots rose 70 per cent to 887,400 units" in nine Asian countries between 2010-15. However, robots may affect Asia differently because of the kinds of goods produced here. As the Regional Perspectives report notes, "more technological sophistication is required for a robot to have the dexterity to work with cloth and carry out stitching operations than work with large metal parts."
Hence the Asian garment industry may continue to employ humans. Ditto leather. In addition, countries such as India with large domestic markets may be protected. For instance, the garments market may "increase by 250 per cent over the next 15 years, requiring an increase in garment workers even in the face of labour-saving technology." Moreover, wages are low in garments, leather, and other traditional Asian manufacturing sectors meaning that human labour enjoys a cost advantage. Aside from economic factors, trade unions, political activism, regulation, and the fear of social upheaval may inhibit the adoption of automation in some markets.
Nonetheless, the WEF's report is clear that all countries will require reskilling - over half of all employees will need to be upskilled by 2022. Unfortunately, employers are primarily focusing their reskilling funding on high-performing workers leaving the rest in the lurch. The burden of reskilling the average or low-performing worker for the future of work will have to be met either by the worker herself or by the government.
Specific to the government, the WEF recommends "rapidly raising education and skills levels of individuals of all ages particularly with regard to both STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and non-cognitive soft skills, enabling people to leverage their uniquely human capabilities." How is this to be done? In many countries, such as India, education is a state subject and the central government does not possess regulatory authority. And many states continue to pursue policies that are regressive - automation and reality of redundancy is not even a subject of policy discussion. Education policies are largely geared at access and equity rather than at preparing students for the future of work - Singapore excepted.
The Asian situation is also different to the West. For instance, in most countries agricultural work is amongst the lowest paid and least mechanised. Millions are transitioning from rural areas to urban centres - creating labour shortages on farms as they perform low-end urban jobs. This generates several opportunities and challenges. First, countries such as India could deliver technology to the farm sector to meet labour shortages and raise productivity. Investments in farm robots and high-yielding seeds offer better returns than current farm loan waivers and other practices that entail moral hazard and corruption.
Second, rural migrants - many of whom possess just high school education - need to be upskilled to rise up the employment chain. Given that they cannot afford traditional education, subsidised mobile-driven courses may be the silver-bullet.
Third, low-and-middle income Asian countries could leverage technology to bridge the skills deficits in key areas such as healthcare. For instance, the number of doctors per 1,000 population is 0.758 for India, 0.568 for Myanmar, 0.978 for Pakistan, 0.472 for Bangladesh, 0.598 for Nepal, 0.295 for Afghanistan, 3.426 for Jordan, and 2.568 for Saudi Arabia according to the WHO.
This compares with 2.568 in the US, 2.825 in the UK, and 3.496 in Australia. Rising incomes in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan mean greater demand for healthcare. Training doctors and retaining them is costly and unlikely to be achieved quickly. The question is whether Asian countries can skip the training queue and use machines to diagnose ailments thereby providing accessible healthcare.
Fourth, the number of law enforcement personnel, judges, lawyers, and community workers per 1,000 population also lags developed countries. Given historically poor performance and corruption in these sectors, merely recruiting more people may not translate into better service. Asian states could use technologies such as facial recognition, robotics, voice recognition, and predictive analytics to provide security, law enforcement functions, support services, and justice delivery. For instance, India's digital national identification programme, Aadhar, offers enormous potential for the delivery of government services if combined with automation.
Fifth, given the ubiquitous use of Facebook, WhatsApp, and other social media in India and other Asian countries, which are the largest users of these technologies, the retail sector is likely to face massive disruption in coming years as online shopping expands and cashier-less stores attain maturity. Thailand, India, Malaysia, and China are already the leaders in online shopping via social media. Millions made redundant in retail will need to be re-skilled for other functions. Given that the retail sector is unlikely to perform this function, governments will have to step in with significant investments to avoid social conflict.
To conclude, the WEF report confirms other studies by Frey and Osborne, the OECD, and McKinsey about the rise of automation and vulnerability of the weakest workers. The pattern of disruption in Asia is very different to the West - here technology could offer massive opportunities to bridge gaps and workers could skip low-wage jobs ripe for redundancy altogether and transition into better work. This requires governments to prioritise the development of human capabilities and delivery of transparent information about market needs to current and prospective workers. Universities and vocational schools will need a massive overhaul and need to work in partnership with business. Otherwise, Asia risks another era of missed opportunity and its demographic dividend will become a dystopian nightmare.
Sandeep Gopalan is Pro Vice-Chancellor at Deakin University, Australia