According to a World Economic Forum (WEF) study, robots will destroy 85 million jobs as the coronavirus pandemic brings about changes in the workplace worldwide. Surveys of nearly 300 global companies found four out of five business executives were accelerating plans to digitise work and deploy new technologies, undoing employment gains made since the financial crisis of 2007-8.
The study said workers need to learn new skills in the next five years to stay afloat and by 2025, employers will divide work between humans and machines equally. The report comes even as sectors across the world have been cutting millions of jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic even as employees work from home. “COVID-19 has accelerated the arrival of the future of work,” WEF Managing Director Saadia Zahidi said.
More than 50% of employers surveyed said they expected to speed up the automation of some roles in their companies, while 43% felt they were likely to cut jobs due to technology. “[These things have] deepened existing inequalities across labour markets and reversed gains in employment made since the global financial crisis in 2007-2008,” said Saadia Zahidi, managing director at WEF. “It’s a double disruption scenario that presents another hurdle for workers in this difficult time. The window of opportunity for proactive management of this change is closing fast.”
Overall, job creation is slowing and job destruction is accelerating as companies around the world use technology rather than people for data entry, accounting and administration duties. The good news is that more than 97 million jobs will emerge across the care economy, in tech industries like artificial intelligence (AI), and in content creation, the Geneva-based WEF said. “The tasks where humans are set to retain their comparative advantage include managing, advising, decision-making, reasoning, communicating and interacting,” it said. Demand would rise for workers who can fill green economy jobs, cutting-edge data and AI functions, and new roles in engineering, cloud computing and product development.
US Labour Department’s data showed new applications for US jobless benefits rose to a seven-week high of 898,000 last week, an increase of 53,000 amid the pandemic. It was the sharpest rise in two months as the United States attempts to recover from mass layoffs amid the virus.
