'Reskilling Revolution Needed for the Millions of Jobs at Risk Due To Technological Disruption' (weforum.org)

A new report, published by The World Economic Forum on Monday estimates that 1.4 million U.S. jobs will be hit by automation between now and 2026. Of those, 57 percent belong to women. Without re-education, 16 percent of affected workers will have no job prospects, the study finds. A further 25 percent would have one to three job options. The report adds The positive finding from the report is that with adequate reskilling, 95% of the most immediately at-risk workers would find good-quality, higher-wage work in growing job families. Report highlights the urgent need for a massive reskilling programme, safety nets to support workers while they reskill, and support with job-matching.

Comments

Reskilling is a horrible word

[Billy the Mountain]

I liked retraining better.

Re:Reskilling is a horrible word

[ceoyoyo]

Someone I know posted a diagram of the feudal system on Facebook today. It shows food flowing down to the peasants from the aristocracy. That's exactly what the aristocracy likes the peasants to think... never mind that the only source of food is the farms that the peasants work.

I have another friend who's a lawyer. She was complaining about working long hours. I asked if her firm was in trouble and couldn't afford to hire more lawyers. Nah, we're swimming in money. Shortage of lawyers? Nah, lots of good unemployed ones. So why? The culture says that if you don't work ridiculous hours you're not a good lawyer, so everyone does it.

You're right, some people need to work so people can eat, have shelter, etc. At one time, when humanity existed on the edge, that number was equal to (sometimes exceeded) the population. It has been decreasing for a long time, and is currently surprisingly small. It looks to decrease dramatically in the future, as more automation takes over many of the few remaining critical jobs.

The vast majority of us in western nations do not work so we (or anybody else) can eat or have shelter. We work doing various things, a surprising number of which are completely unnecessary, in order to convince our lords to give us food and money.

They still don't fucking get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot retrain a toilet cleaner to be a robot repairman.

After this or maybe the next wave of automation, there will be many humans whose labor will NEVER be worth what it costs to keep them alive.

A wave or two after that, there will be no humans who can do anything a machine can't do better and cheaper. Not engineers. Not artists. Not politicians. Not CEOs. Not you, either.

Nobody. Period.

"Jobs" are going to be OVER soon. Concentrating on putting people in different jobs ignores the main problem.

We better fucking come up with a better way to run things and a way to make the transition, or we're fucked.

Re:They still don't fucking get it.

[Hizonner]

I think this is true.

Even today, nobody seems to be willing to face up to the idea that not everybody can be high-skilled, and the economy can't necessarily absorb that much high-skilled labor even if they could.

When machines are higher-than-high-skilled, human labor becomes more and more economically irrelevant.

Re:They still don't fucking get it.

[bettodavis]

Ironically cleaning toilets, moping floors, de-dusting offices and a lot of menial tasks are very hard to fully or cheaply automate.

And please, don't get all "Roomba!" on me, because what a Roomba can do is but a small fraction of what a passably good cleaning person can do.
Many manual yet specialized blue collar jobs are equally difficult to fully automate. That's why self driving trucks are seen as such a big deal, given the mass of people potentially impacted and because such occurrences are not that common.

Paper pushers on the other hand, are in quite more risk of being replaced by a slightly better document processor/generator.

Re:They still don't fucking get it.

[hey!]

You cannot retrain a toilet cleaner to be a robot repairman.

It's not clear to me this is true. Sure, there may be some janitors who literally cannot be trained for better jobs, but of the millions of people doing those kinds of jobs there's bound to be many who could be trained for something more challenging.

I don't think, however, retraining toilet cleaners is in the cards, for two reasons. First, there isn't a job "toilet cleaner"; it's a task glommed onto various low status jobs. It's unlikely we'll see that task automated because it's not a big, immediate head count win. Secondly, and more importantly, I don't think politicians care about people doing low status jobs to do anything for them if they lose their jobs.

Look at rural and small town census tracts after the Great Recession -- there was no "after the recession" for them, it's still on. Sure they get lip service, but if you think anyone is going to prioritize the interests of an out-of-work coal miner over a fracking billionaire, consider that these are also the places which are ravaged by the opioid crisis. There's lots of posturing on that issue too, but no action. Drug wholesalers, over the course of two years, shipped nine million pills to a single pharmacy in West Virginia serving a community of less than four hundred people, and no politicians have proposed anything to prevent things like that happening again.

59,000 people are killed in the US by the opioid crisis annually, the equivalent of a 9/11 attack every two weeks, but we must tread carefully lest we harm drug company profits. I submit to you that demonstrates the lower value we put on the lives of those people relative to the lives of bankers.

If we can't be bothered lift a finger to save their lives, why would we save their jobs?

Re:They still don't fucking get it.

[cayenne8]

While people (not just women, asshole) being able to stay home to spend more time with their kids would be a good outcome

I bought this up, specifically for women since the article said 57% of those displaced would be women, and women ARE traditionally, the home keepers and the ones that raise the child while the other mate works. This isn't being an asshole, this is referring to 1000's of years of how it has been, with this both parent working things being a fairly recent trend.

I do believe our kids would be acting better and be more education driven, etc. if they had home supervision in the formative years. We do see problems today that we didn't see in significant numbers when I was coming up as a child.

Fucking politeness is fashionable with young people. What the fuck do you want?

Where in the world do you live that you see youth polite???

Civility and respect for elders, etc has gone out the (to quote you) fucking window....you rarely get a thank you, or a you're welcome response when you do say thank you.

I'm not shy about 4-letter words myself, however, there is a time and place for them, and in general company or public is not the place to use it, and it would be nice if more people could do more than 3-4 words without dropping the F-bomb in general conversation.

Again, I'm not shy about language, but sheesh....try to learn some other words to use in "polite" company and situations.

People have been whining about "the problem with youth" at least since there have been written records, but it so happens that that's particularly stupid at the moment, assuming you live in any Western country.

Of course every generation complains some about the one after them....BUT in this case, we're seeing some very radical and troubling things.

We see VERY unmotivated youth, not willing to get out and search and compete for a job. Thinking things have to be just right and the job "means something"....when did this become a thing? The entitlement of the latest generation is really amazing. And in the US, I'm just shocked to see how little they value the rights and values many generations before them fought and at times, died for...and they're so willing to throw it out the window...to not be independent, and be willing to give all power to the government to care for them.

I'm amazed at how many young folks are actually out there in the US, pushing not only for true socialism (as the the utopian vision they have) but for down right communism. And..their refusal to accept that there ARE opposing voices out there that aren't the group think, and not only don't want to hear opposing viewpoints, but want to prevent them from even being expressed in public forums.

Yes, there are some radical problems with many of the youth we have now, that hasn't been seen before, and it is having a negative country wide effect.

Please stop telling people to reskill

[rsilvergun]

it didn't work when the blue collar jobs went overseas and it's not going to work now. That's because:

a) older folks learn slower than young folks (fact)

b) it's kinda hard to work full time supporting the family you made when you had a job and go to school full time.

c) A lot of the folks being asked to re-skill didn't make it through college the first time when they were young and still had the support of their parents and access to scholarships only available to high school seniors

d) Nobody wants to support these folks while they go back to school, since that means tax hikes and we just did a $1.5 trillion dollar tax _cut_.

This is precisely why Hilary lost the election. Just telling them to reskill isn't an answer. It's not going to work. Think of something else or get ready for some pain while they elect God only knows what kind of people in a desperate attempt to find someone who will listen to them.

Reskill into what?

[apoc.famine]

I skimmed the article to find out, and came up with this gem:

According to this forecast, only one job family—Production—will experience an overall net job decline. However, both Production and Office and Administrative roles are set to experience a significant employment decline. Unlike Production, however, the Office and Administrative job family is forecast to experience sufficient new job gains as well in roles like Billing, Cost and Rate Clerks, Receptionists and Information Clerks, and Customer Service Representatives to counter-balance the shrinking of other occupational categories, such as Data Entry Keyers, File Clerks, Mail Clerks, and Administrative Assistants

So one of their super amazing findings is that data entry people will reskill into receptionists, and we'll need a lot more of those.

It seems to me that they don't have any idea what they're talking about. If you have less jobs under the Office and Administrative category from losing data based ones, you don't need more billing people and receptionists. And how is billing not going to see a similar reduction?

They seem to miss the fundamental issue here, which is that we're quickly getting to the point of being able to replace all of the jobs they think that we'll need more of that we could fill with the people already being made redundant. Some how their magic math shows that we can just retrain people for existing jobs and then we'll suddenly need lots more people in those positions. If that doesn't happen, a lot of the article falls apart. If those jobs also start going away, they're arguing for exactly the wrong approach.

I don't know about everyone else's office, but around here we're not hiring more receptionists and customer service reps. The trend is in the opposite direction, actually. Overall, just a rather fantastical article that seems detached from reality. It sounds good, and if you're selling retraining services, I bet it sounds even better.

Re:They get it.

[Rick Schumann]

Jobs are going to disappear to robots

No, they're not. This is what fools actually believe.

Re:They get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

That always cracks me up. In the past, you might have a peasant rebellion. These days, a single Sarin gas canister would get rid of not just an entire rebellion, but ensure it won't happen again, due to residual poison left in the area. Or, a single A10 with some BRRT.

Sorry. Syria showed us what happens when revolutions happen. It just means a lot of dead stupid civilians, and showing that the people in charge can stay in charge. Revolution is impossible these days.

Re:germany has trade schools

[uncqual]

I think what Germany does makes a lot of sense. However, remember, that students are diverted into the "trade" path at a quite young age based on academic performance. I don't think that will fly in the US because parents will scream "discrimination" when their kid does poorly in school and is shunted to the trade school path -- even when it was the parent's failure to instill the value education, homework, and discipline into their spawn.

And, almost anyone who ends up with $150K-$200K of student debt and doesn't have a degree that is in demand did something VERY stupid and probably -- or actually, a lot of things very stupid. It doesn't take long to figure out that a BA degree in Gender Studies with a minor in Ancient Greek Mythology after taking seven years to finish those degrees is going to qualify you for a job where the most important skills is asking "Would you like fries with that?".

Re:germany has trade schools

[ctilsie242]

It can happen even if one has a relevant major. If one graduates into a crappy economy (like those who graduated December of 2008), student loans capitalize, and that much student debt can be easily amassed just through having to kick the can due to forbearances.

The US is the only country which has this system where if one wants to better themselves, they have to mortgage their entire life. China, Russia, Chile, and most of Europe, college and/or trade programs are "free". They understand that if they want a "harvest" (i.e. skilled people), they have to plant "seeds" (as in education.) This is a fact that seems lost in the US.