Fears over jobs in face of technology advancement unfounded, says World Bank senior economist

PETALING JAYA: Fears of a scarcity of jobs over the exciting trends and rapid breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and internet of things resulting an eventual end to employment of human labour are unfounded, according to the World Bank’s senior economist, Achim Schmillen.

He pointed out there is not much evidence to suggest such an outcome.

“Apart from Covid-19 crisis where there is a significant drop in employment across the board, the broader medium and longer term trends in almost all countries and regions show that employment has grown more or less in line with the general growth of the workforce and population,” he said at SC x SC panel session titled “Are We A Fit-for-Future Workforce?” today.

However, Schmillen acknowledged that there is a lot of disruption with Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR 4.0) and against the backdrop of the previous revolutions borne by the introduction of steam engines, electricity and automation, the threat of wholesale replacement of human workers has yet come to pass.

“Furthermore, it has also brought gains in better living standards, higher productivity among others which have taken years and decades for such gains to materialise,” he said, highlighting that IR 4.0 might bring a lot of benefits along with disruptions that have to be managed.

Given the advances in AI and machine learning, technology has also encroached into creative pursuits, which was previously thought as a human domain, but the senior economist pointed out that although a machine in a lab could do something, whether in theory or in principle, there are still hurdles for it to do at scale and replace workers.

“There is still a pricing effect, we’ve seen Nike and Adidas producing some shoes with 3D printers but across the board it is much cheaper to do this in Cambodia and other low wage environments than to have machines to do it even though the technology is there.

The session also saw the participation of JobStreet.com’s customer solutions consultant Chua Kuang Eu who shared the results of its latest survey of the job market.

Based on a survey conducted by the site in August, the top five hires sought by companies in the next six months are: administrators; human resource personnel; sales and business development; IT personnels and marketing.

Chua pointed out that the popularity of sales and business development reflects the emphasis of the companies trying to emerge from their losses in the last six months due to the pandemic, while the abrupt need for IT talents is due to businesses having to resort to digital solutions for business continuity.

In regard to informal employment, which is defined as workers without or with limited access to job dependence, social protections and benefits, Khazanah Research Institute’s research associate Nur Thuraya Sazali pointed out that an estimated 40% of Malaysian workers are in that category and, globally, such workers make up about 60%.

In research conducted over the past 10 years, she said, the institute found the persistent share of informal employment despite the available scheme may signal that new jobs being created are moving away from formal full-time employment.

“Although non-standard employment is more prevalent in rural areas among workers without higher education in industries like agriculture, we are also seeing a rapid rise among tertiary educated workers, younger cohorts in early 20s to late 40s and workers in urban areas, especially in sales and services,” said Thuraya.

With the pandemic, she said, the industries that have been more affected by Covid-19 are likely to have non-standard employment and their workers are more likely to lose their job and income, relying more on cash transfer. without access to employment-related measures. by the government.

“There is a price to work flexibility, it’s time for everybody to workers to be aware of the cost of flexibility and how to manage that.”