BOOK REVIEW
by Leopold Mureithi
Professor of Economics - University of Nairobi
“The Future of Jobs Report 2018”
from the World Economic Forum
migration restrictions, and new generation
mind-set. As a result of the combination and
permutation of these forces, there are complex
feedback loops between new technology, jobs
and skills. New technologies can drive business
growth, job creation and demand for specialist
skills but they can also displace entire roles when
certain tasks become obsolete or automated.
Skills gaps -- both among workers and among
the leadership of organizations -- can speed up
the trends towards automation in some cases
but can also pose barriers to the adoption of new
technologies and therefore impede business
growth (p. 7).
The book maps “the scale of occupational change
underway” by “documenting examples of stable,
new and redundant roles [in] all industries” (p.
9). From this we learn (by way of illustration)
that managers, teachers, and logisticians will
continue to be needed; data scientists, process
automation specialists, and digital marketers
will achieve new heights; and clerks, accountants
and drivers will face oblivion. This is the palpable
reality that all will have to prepare for.
Historical experience of the gross effect of
technology on employment is positive. More
jobs get created as technology develops, but
very different types of jobs. It is the structure,
not the quantity of jobs, which raises issues of
human adjustment to take advantage of the
new situation. Against this backdrop, the Centre
for the New Economy and Society of the World
Economic Forum (WEF) issued an insight report
on the current state of job types available in 2018
and prognostic projections to 2022.
One could reckon that the period covered
was too short for meaningful workforce
transformation to occur. In a sense, yes, because
of the complicated institutional factors at play
“such as ease of commercialization, public
adoption of new technologies and existing
labour laws” (p. 7). But the match of technology
-- driven as it is by considerations of reduction
in cost of production, accuracy, and efficiency
– will continue and be felt even in the short
term. Labour market disruption is a foregone
conclusion.
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HUMAN FUTURES
The research for the publication of the 147-
page book adopted polling and trend analysis
methodologies: “313 unique responses by global
companies from a wide range of industry sectors,
collectively representing more than 15 million
employees.” (p. 5) and grouped into 12 clusters (p.
31). WEF retained three specialists, Till Alexander
Leopold, Vesselina Stefanova Ratcheva, and
Saadia Zahidi in addition to teaming up with
Linkedin (p. 19). Their analyses are thorough at
industry (pp. 42-65) and at country/region levels
(pp. 68-125).
Their findings highlight the forces likely to affect
the future of business and work. Positive ones are
identified as new technology, big data, mobile
internet, artificial intelligence, cloud-computing,
economic growth, expanding influence of
developing technologies, education expansion,
new energy sources, and the expanding middle
classes. Negative factors include economic
protectionism, cybercrime, erratic government
policies, climate change, ageing population,
An interesting finding is the awareness of the
need to reskill: “by 2022, no less than 54% of all
employees will require significant reskilling and
upskilling. Of these, about 35% are expected to
require additional training of up to six months,
9% will require reskilling lasting six to 12 months,
while 10% will require additional skills training of
more than a year.” p. 11. This calls for proactive
preparation by educators, individual workers,
government, businesses, and labour unions
“partnering … to reshape school and college
curricula.” (p. 14).
Acknowledging that “forecasts of the extent of
structural change across global labour markets
depend on taking into consideration the time
horizon” (p. 3), WEF chose to limit themselves
to five years for their analysis, possibly guided
by the fact that accuracy of forecast tends to fall
as the time horizon increases due to volatility,
uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA).
Consequently, “this report -- and future editions
-- aim to provide a (rolling) five-year outlook” (p.
3). These small bites can be useful guides to a
probable (likely) future, a kind of augmented
present.
Are other futures possible? Yes, and a close
relative is a set of plausible (credible) futures;
also a preferred future of stakeholders eager to
achieve a humane future; to say nothing of what is
really achieved, with possible wildcard surprises,
disruptors, and other erstwhile unthought-of
futures. So, the worldview adopted by WEF is just
one of the many possible futures. But, because
of their short-term rolling approach, they might
reach a future, say 2050, which might not be
easily foreseeable – in terms of jobs and skills - at
present. Maybe at that time someone could do
some back-casting and retrospectively wonder
how we got there.
Though WEF postulates a complementary
stance between technology and labour (pp. 8, 11,
12), they acknowledge that “popular discourse is
often fixated on technology that substitutes for
humans” (p. 11). Evidence is accumulating that
robots are substituting labour, at the margin,
as cost of robots falls relative to labour inputs.
So, it is entirely possible that the long term
relationship between automation and labour
is an inverted U-curve, such that Jim Dator’s
notion of a full unemployment state is plausible.
Fortunately, WEF pointed a way forward to avoid
getting caught unawares by supporting:
social safety nets to better support those
who may need support to adjust to the
new labour market. This could be achieved
through reforming and extending existing
social protection schemes, or through
moving to a wholly new model such as the
idea of basic income and basic services.
Even in full unemployment, human creativity is
such that people will still find useful things to do,
even if it is only to kill boredom. The futures of
the future of work (FFOW) is work in progress. All
in all, this WEF’s Future of Jobs Report 2018 is a
sound contribution to the continuing search for
the future of work, and decent one at that.
HUMAN FUTURES
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