There are 4 major technological changes which will significantly change the landscape for future job prospects around the world. The changes are—ubiquitous high-speed mobile internet; artificial intelligence; widespread adoption of big data analytics; and cloud technology. The number of jobs which these major technological advances will displace in the future has been the subject of numerous studies and surveys and op-eds and policy papers.
Oxford academics, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, estimated that 47% of American jobs are at high risk of automation by the mid-2030s; McKinsey Global Institute predicts between 40 million and 160 million women worldwide may need to transition between occupations by 2030, often into higher-skilled roles. Clerical work they believe; often done by secretaries, schedulers and bookkeepers, is an area especially susceptible to automation; Oxford Economics states that up to 20 million manufacturing jobs worldwide will be lost to robots by 2030. To some, future job prospects for those doing unskilled, repetitive or easily replicated work does not look very bright.
McKinsey Global Institute also posits that worldwide, with sufficient economic growth, innovation, and investment, there can be enough new job creation to offset the impact of automation, although in some advanced economies additional investments will be needed to reduce the risk of job shortages. In the US, there will be net positive job growth through 2030. The World Economic Forum predicts that automation will displace 75 million jobs but generate 133 million new ones worldwide by 2022 and Gartner states that AI-related job creation will reach two million net-new jobs in 2025.
Our STEMGuyana organization does not predict what the jobs future holds but we are confident of the skills today’s children will need to learn and strengthen, to prepare them for any version of the predicted futures in any industry. While we support STEM education and believe that teaching children to build robots and code are a viable path to prepare an important segment of our nation’s children to contribute significantly to Guyana’s future technology industry, we have always maintained that it is the learning process, the integrated curriculum, the project (team) based learning, that are critical to the development of soft skills which really generate the treasure trove of learning outcomes we have determined to be critical to the preparation of any child for the 21st century economy.
Essential Skills aka Soft Skills
All children should be able to read and write effectively, but upon this foundation a priority should be placed on their ability to communicate effectively, to think creatively, to work on teams, to work with diverse groups of people; both ethnically and geographically; to be willing and able to solve conflicts; to be confident and to be willing to be a lifelong learner, quite often motivating themselves to learn content independently and online. STEMGuyana promotes the development of these skills in a fun and exciting STEM club environment, but we recognize that these skills can also be learned in the classroom of an engaging and progressive teacher, or through involvement in team sports or involvement in the Arts. At STEMGuyana, our goal is to identify, enrich, inspire and help prepare the approximately 5% of children (wherever they are) who are crazy about creating technology, much the same way that top athletic talent is identified and honed early to produce champions. We also recognize that innovation and creativity are critical elements to childhood development. STEMGuyana supports the optimal development of the whole child in a caring environment devoid of physical or psychological abuse.
The Future
According to The World Economic Forum’s – Future Of Jobs report, “The emerging contours of the new world of work in the Fourth Industrial Revolution are rapidly becoming a lived reality for millions of workers and companies around the world. The inherent opportunities for economic prosperity, societal progress and individual flourishing in this new world of work are enormous, yet depend crucially on the ability of all concerned stakeholders to instigate reform in education and training systems, labour market policies, business approaches to developing skills, employment arrangements and existing social contracts. Catalysing positive outcomes and a future of good work for all will require bold leadership and an entrepreneurial spirit from NGOs, businesses and governments, as well as an agile mindset of lifelong learning from employees.”
The report indicates that to date, many employers’ retraining and upskilling efforts remain focused on a narrow set of current highly-skilled, highly-valued employees. However, in order to truly rise to the challenge of formulating a winning workforce strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, businesses will need to recognise human capital investment as an asset rather than a liability. Stakeholders must remember that new technology adoption drives business growth, new job creation and augmentation of existing jobs, provided it can fully leverage the talents of a motivated and agile workforce who are equipped with futureproof skills to take advantage of new opportunities through continuous retraining and upskilling. Conversely, skills gaps—both among workers and among an organization’s senior leadership—may significantly hamper new technology adoption and therefore business growth.
