Progress comes at a cost. The technological revolution and the adverse economic situation will cause the loss of around 14 million jobs in the world in the next decade.
This is the calculation made by the Davos Forum in the report The future of jobs report 2023, which was made public in detail yesterday. The energy transition will create new jobs. Specifically, it is estimated that around 68 million jobs will be created in these new sectors: artificial intelligence, sustainability specialists, business analysts, IT security experts, digital commerce and also classic areas more resistant to digitization, such as ‘education or agriculture.
But, on the opposite front, there will be a hemorrhage of 83 million jobs in certain activities susceptible to automation. Not only because of the robots, as has been warned in recent years, but because of the algorithm. Areas such as bank tellers, postal services, administrative secretaries, clerks, accounting, statistics, archives and documentation will suffer…
“For people around the world, the past three years have been full of turmoil and uncertainty for their lives and livelihoods, with covid, geopolitical and economic changes, and the rapid advancement of AI and other technologies which now risk creating more uncertainty,” said Saadia Zahidi, Director General of the World Economic Forum.
There is a fact that invites reflection. While today 66% of work tasks are done by humans, this percentage will drop to 57% in 2027. This means that in five years 43% of the work will be done by machines.
What should humans do to defend our jobs? Well, we will have to update our knowledge. According to the World Economic Forum, 44% of what humans know now will no longer serve us. It will be necessary to train in analytical and creative thinking, resilience, flexibility, agility, motivation and curiosity: capacities inherent in human beings that will allow us to (still) compete in the labor market of the future.
The paradox is that in the current situation there are already mismatches between supply and demand. The Davos report cites some data produced by the LinkedIn platform, according to which in some sectors it is difficult to find available labor to work or the right profiles to cover the position. Specifically, this situation of tension is present in the hospitality industry, fossil energy, the manufacturing industry and the health sector.
By country, the ratio of unfilled vacancies to job demands has soared in Germany, the Netherlands and the US, a trend that began during the pandemic and has continued until now.
And so, the labor market has entered the following paradox: in the future there will be jobs that will disappear. And many of the jobs that are offered today will be left without candidates interested in taking them or who have the necessary skills to do them.
