Robots taking our jobs!

 

We probably have been hearing this for some time and if experts are to be believed the number of jobs available will go down by as much as 40% over the next few decades with the robots taking over. However how true is this and should you be worried?

To give a bit of a background the automation and jobs loss isn’t something new or has just started to happen yesterday. The Email service literally killed the postal services globally resulting in huge job losses everywhere. Back in the day when our labour intensive factories introduced machines to do the job, and the assembly lines to reduce time/efforts etc., we had a similar wave of layoffs. Lots of people lost jobs back then too, that however resulted in labour intensive jobs convert to one done by engineers. This eventually resulted in reduced costs, reduce prices, more people able to afford things like cars, electronics; eventually resulting into job market boom. This gave a huge impetus to the economy and continues to do so.

Moving to the service industry, the trend has been similar. For e.g. BPO’s with the help of technology resulted huge job losses in the developed economies, and many more examples like these in past. However this resulted in a huge spike in jobs in the developing economies like India. This obviously results in income levels in the country which the jobs have been moved to go up significantly, thereby allowing even the teenagers and the younger generations to afford phones like Apple and Samsung, thus resulting in increased profits to the companies which originally outsourced all their work.

So if you look at it, the whole automation thing is a cycle which probably will never end. We humans are programmed to find better ways of doing things. And as long as that’s happening, the skills required for the jobs will continue to change. Therefore all who are worried that there will be huge job losses, yes there might be temporarily, but the majority would get converted to little more higher skilled job and result into much bigger job market down the line. Ensure you up skill your selves, take up a professional course like ACCA/CFA/CMA etc. and look for the creamier jobs!

 

About Author

Zaheer Sayed, is one of the oldest ACCA members in India having passed out ACCA exams in December 2007 from London. Has vast work experience of over 14 years, having worked with Ernst and Young in Stat Audits to working as Associate Director at the UBS Bank, has in-depth knowledge of finance and accounting world. On academics side, has been teaching for almost 10 years, with ACCA teaching experience of over 6 years specialising in Reporting, Tax and Audits. Has also co-authored over 20 titles for a leading publication house in Pune on varied topics like Economics, Audit, Accounting, etc.