Today, there has been a lot of chatter about robots and how they are going to take away jobs from people and dramatically transform the labor market. This may not sound like much for a lot of people, but the reality is that robots are coming and they are coming really strong. Companies are looking for new ways to boost efficiency for repetitive tasks and robots and automation seem to be the way to go.
Although, this may not be the case for the Nigerian labour market in the nearest future, it is a possibility that should constantly stay in the view of policy makers. For businesses, robotics and automation may be the key to unlocking limitless opportunities for their customers, but what does it mean for the labor market – here we look at some of the pros and cons.
Where will it be worse?
In January 2016, the World Economic Forum (WEF) published a report on the future of the global labour given advancements in robotics and automation. The report states that by 2020, about 7.1 million people will lose their jobs, and these will be mostly white-collar workers engaged in office and administrative tasks. And in the same time only 2 million new jobs will be created in the mathematical, architecture, and engineering industries. It is 2019, and this report is now already 3 years old, but not much have changed in its prediction.
In addition to the WEF report, the United Nations also reports that developing countries like Nigeria will suffer the most from automation: about 2/3 of their population may lose work. Developed countries may breathe easily: those “endangered” jobs have long since disappeared there.
Even Apple’s Biggest contractor, Foxconn, made a major automation move in October of 2016 when it laid off 60,000 of its workers because it employed 40,000 robots. As confirmed by its CEO, Terry Guo, plans to increase robot workers by 20-30% annually are already underway. This move is supposed to shift a lot of the technical work to robots and retain a minimal number of human workers for areas such as logistics, testing, production and control.
Insights From McKinsey Global Institute Research
McKinsey analysts studied more than 2,000 tasks performed by people of 800 different occupations and came to the following conclusion: almost half of the work that costs employers 15 trillion dollars can be automated using present-day technologies. At the same time only about 5% of these professions can be automated completely with the help of existing technologies and another 60% of occupations can be automated by at least a third.
Theoretically, by 2055, half of all the work done by people can go to robots. Perhaps this will happen 20 years earlier, or maybe 20 years later – it all depends on many factors: technical capabilities; the cost of developing new technologies and their implementation; demand and supply on labor market and labor costs; economic climate; legal regulation and the influence of society.
Table 1. Showing What Potential Percentage of Labour Will Be Automated In Some Of The World’s Most Developed Nations
| Country | Potential automation (%) | Number of people to be affected by automation (million people) |
| Japan | 56 | 35.6 |
| India | 52 | 235.1 |
| China | 51 | 395.3 |
| Russia | 50 | 35.4 |
| France | 43 | 9.7 |
| Germany | 48 | 20.5 |
| Spain | 48 | 8.7 |
| Great Britain | 43 | 11.9 |
| USA | 46 | 60.6 |
| Italy | 50 | 11.8 |
| Canada | 47 | 7.2 |
McKinsey analysts cite many examples of possible disruptions by automation but a notable one is the estimate of how the Internet affected the French labor market. The survey showed that over 15 years the Internet has deprived 500,000 people of work, but at the same time created 1.2 million new jobs (meaning that the disappearance of each old workplace created 2.4 new jobs).
Why robots may not displace you in a while.
In general, computers are smart but they are not that smart to be honest. Its what you give that it gives back – that’s how robots work. They are in fact, far from perfect. According to McKinsey, some areas will be affected more than others. Yeah, robots are great, but humans will still be needed immensely for the following areas:
- generating novel patterns / categories
- logical thinking / problem solving
- creativity
- coordination of actions with several objects (interaction with other devices and people)
- understanding human language (i.e., not computer language)
- determining emotional state and social status
- ability to draw the right conclusions from the emotional state and social position of the interlocutor, and respond correctly
- ability to express an emotional response that is appropriate for a particular situation
- mobility
Companies and employees alike should be ready.
This is not a hoax. Company managers and their employers should really be prepared to tackle serious changes.
According to the study, by ManpowerGroup, technologies change the requirements for employees: to supplement robots (rather than compete with them), people need to develop such qualities as creativity, emotional intelligence, and cognitive flexibility. And companies should invest more in staff training or even in their retraining.
On the global scale – what is happening?
The relocation of the factories to Asia was explained by savings due to cheaper labor. The only inconvenience was that the production was far from the end users, which means additional costs and more time for transportation. But now robots are becoming cheaper than cheap manual labor. In addition, a high degree of automation can improve production speed and performance.
It is possible that other major producers will jump on this bandwagon as well, and gradually production will fully return to its original countries.
With the further development of technologies, automation can affect many more areas than it does today. But it’s more than likely that this process will take decades. So do not fret, instead keep learning about new technologies and improving your skill set.
