20m Jobs Will Become Robotic By 2030
Up to 20 million manufacturing jobs around the world could be replaced by robots by 2030, according to the analysis firm Oxford Economics. The company predicts that over the next ten years the technological changes that are already going-on will significantly spread through-out the economy and change the working environment completely.
By 2027, the Internet of Things and mobile technologies will be deeply embedded in everyday life in both the personal and business spheres.
For instance, by 2030, it is expected that there will be 500 billion devices and objects connected to the Internet. The impact of automation, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things (IoT) is being felt almost everywhere, in all industries, jobs and everyday life.
However, increasing automation will also boost, create and change jobs and economic growth. For expample, 6.5 million US workers will have to seek out a new profession over the next decade. Workers in transport, lower-level manufacturing and agriculture jobs will face a difficult time.
Meanwhile, we see new jobs emerging in other areas, such as computing, management and media, as well as in healthcare and sales. But the effects of AI, Data Search and Analysis will have significant applications to accounting, law and architecture, and others.
Mechanisation radical changes to Farming by 1900s
Technological innovations are leveraged by businesses to improve their productivity. This alters the demands on their workforce, often displacing some workers from their jobs. Such change, however, also leads to a growth in prosperity, generating additional demand, which, in turn, creates new and different jobs. Employment in agriculture is a famous example.
In the year 1900, roughly half of all US workers were employed on farms. Today, that ratio stands at less than two percent. This reshaping of the labor market occurred thanks to mechanisation, the technological transformation of the day, which enabled the sector to produce much more food with far fewer workers. Certainly farm-hands lost their jobs, which would have affected their livelihoods in the short-term.
The Digital Revolution – How did we get Here?
The development and advancement of digital technologies started with one fundamental idea: The Internet. Here is a brief timeline of how the Digital Revolution progressed:
1947-1979 - The transistor, which was introduced in 1947, paved the way for the development of advanced digital computers. The government, military and other organisations made use of computer systems during the 1950s and 1960s. This research eventually led to the creation of the World Wide Web.
1980s - The computer became a familiar machine and by the end of the decade, being able to use one became a necessity for many jobs. The first cellphone was also introduced during this decade.
1990s - By 1992, the World Wide Web had been introduced, and by 1996 the Internet became a normal part of most business operations. By the late 1990s, the Internet became a part of everyday life for almost half of the American population.
2000s - By this decade, the Digital Revolution had begun to spread all over the developing world; mobile phones were commonly seen, the number of Internet users continued to grow, and the television started to transition from using analog to digital signals.
2010 and beyond - By this decade, Internet makes up more than 25 percent of the world's population. Mobile communication has also become very important, as nearly 70 percent of the world's population owns a mobile phone. The connection between Internet websites and mobile gadgets has become a standard in communication.
It was predicted that by 2015, the innovation of tablet computers will far surpass personal computers with the use of the Internet and the promise of cloud computing services. This of course now allows users to consume media and use business applications on their mobile devices, applications that would otherwise be too much for such devices to handle.
Rise of the Robots
Each new industrial robot wipes out 1.6 manufacturing jobs, the firm said, with the least-skilled regions being more affected.
Regions where more people have lower skills, which tend to have weaker economies and higher unemployment rates anyway, are much more vulnerable to the loss of jobs due to robots, Oxford Economics say.
Moreover, workers who move out of manufacturing, tend to get new jobs in transport, construction, maintenance, and office and administration work, which in turn are vulnerable to automation, it said.
On average, each additional robot installed in those lower-skilled regions could lead to nearly twice as many job losses as those in higher-skilled regions of the same country, exacerbating economic inequality and political polarisation, which is growing already.
We've seen plenty of predictions that robots are about to put everyone, from factory workers to journalists, out of a job, with white collar work suddenly vulnerable to automation. But this report presents a more nuanced view, stressing that the productivity benefits from automation should boost growth, meaning as many jobs are created as lost.While it sees the robots moving out of the factories and into service industries, it's still in manufacturing that the report says they will have the most impact, particularly in China where armies of workers could be replaced by machines.
Where service jobs are under threat, they are in industries such as transport or construction rather than the law or journalism and it's lower-skilled people who may have moved from manufacturing who are vulnerable.
The challenge for governments is how to encourage the innovation that the robots promise while making sure they don't cause new divides in society.
Oxford Economics also found the more repetitive the job, the greater the risk of its being wiped out.Jobs which require more compassion, creativity or social intelligence are more likely to continue to be carried out by humans "for decades to come", it said.
The firm called on policymakers, business leaders, workers, and teachers to think about how to develop workforce skills to adapt to growing automation.
About 1.7 million manufacturing jobs have already been lost to robots since 2000, including 400,000 in Europe, 260,000 in the US, and 550,000 in China, it said. The firm predicted that China will have the most manufacturing automation, with as many as 14 million industrial robots by 2030.
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