Government Told to Anticipate Jobs Takeover by Machines

The outlook covered employment conditions in 15 economies, namely Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States, plus ASEAN and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

Former finance minister Chatib Basri highlighted on Tuesday the central role of the government in creating regulations that caters to the changing landscape of business and workforce organization that will be affected by advancing technological change.

The use of technology at work, called ‘disruptive innovation’, will replace 7.1 million manual jobs and create 2 million new jobs, said Chatib, advisory board chairman of Mandiri Institute, a think tank run by state lender Bank Mandiri.

He quoted the World Economic Forum (WEF) 2016 outlook on employment in 15 major economies in the 2015 to 2020 period.

The technology that will change the landscape of workforce organization includes mobile internet, automation of knowledge, internet of things, cloud computing, advance robotics and autonomous or near autonomous vehicles.

They will replace manual jobs mostly in the office and administrative sector, followed by manufacturing and production, construction and extraction, arts, design, entertainment, sport, media, legal, installation and maintenance.

New jobs, meanwhile, will appear mostly in sectors such as business and financial operations, followed by management, computational and mathematical, architecture, engineering, sales, education and training.

The outlook covered employment conditions in 15 economies, namely Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States, plus ASEAN and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

“Use of technology requires people to work more analytically and creatively, leaving those who are unskilled behind with low wages, accentuating the income gap,” Chatib said during the 2017 Mandiri HR Symposium Tuesday. (bbn, Stefani Ribka, The Jakarta Post)