HP Innovation Journal Issue 12: Summer 2019 | Page 12

2. BRIDGING THE LABOR GAP
What happens when highly skilled labor is not readily
available? By 2030, demand for high-skilled workers—those
with university degrees or advanced vocational training—will
outstrip supply in nearly all major parts of the world, creat-
ing a talent gap of an estimated 85 million people 4 , or about
16% short of projected high-skilled job demand. Singapore, for
example, short more than 250 thousand high-skilled workers,
will have a gap of more than 1 million (one-sixth the country’s
population) by 2030. This could result in $106.8 billion annual
revenue losses by 2030. 5
The labor gap may accelerate the pace of workplace automa-
tion, hastened by the need to increase productivity. In fact,
automation may in some ways change the nature of the gap
and the composition of the labor force itself. On a global level
today, across all industries, machines perform about 29% of
all work task hours, a figure expected to rise to 42% by 2022 . 6
The more routine the work task, the more addressable it is by
automation. Automation is critical not just to helping fill the
labor gap but to shifting human labor from performing rou-
tine tasks to performing more high-skilled, higher-wage tasks.
AUTOMATION TAKES OVER MORE
OF THE TASK LOAD
% of Task Hours performed by People
% of Task Hours performed by Machines
100%
58%
71%
AUTOMATION POTENTIAL DIRECTLY
LINKED TO TYPE OF HUMAN TASK—
Cross-Industry Profile
Time Spent by Activity
Automation Potential, % of Time
Managing others 18%
Applying expertise 17%
Stakeholder interactions
Unpredictable physical work
20%
26%
Data collection
Data processing
Predictable physical work
42%
29%
The accelerated pace of change requires workers to embrace
lifelong learning and adapt to new skills and technologies.
With up to half of the IT workforce expected to need retrain-
ing by 2022 7 , it’s imperative for businesses and educational
institutions to embrace perpetual learning and leverage new
technologies and platforms to make learning a continuous
cycle from classroom to boardroom.
4. Korn Ferry
5. Korn Ferry
7. World Economic Forum, 2018, Future of Work Survey
HP Innovation Journal Issue 12
81%
Economists have long recognized that education levels are
also significant drivers for income and economic growth.
Reengineering business processes with automation requires
reskilling and education of the associated workforce, as new
types of skills are required to capture the full benefits
from automation and to fill a new category of potentially
higher-wage jobs.
6. World Economic Forum, Bain, McKinsey
10
69%
F See “Automation Requires a Reimagining of Education”
article in this issue to learn more. P.44
+13%
2018
64%
2022