Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

What will become of the retail worker after the ‘apocalypse’?

Retail bankruptcies aren’t the only numbers approaching recession-era levels.

With store closures topping 6,000 for the year, the number of announced job cuts in retail has passed 60,000, according to research from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The year’s retail job losses have already surpassed all other years but one since 2009, and 2017 is barely half over.

Most of the losses have come from the department store and apparel sectors, as well as other niche retailers. Macy’s alone has let go of 10,000 people, and J.C. Penney has laid off another 5,000, according to Challenger.The losses could continue as […]

The future of work could involve more palm trees than you think

The future of work could involve more palm trees than you think

Making the social media rounds is a site that predicts how likely your job is to be automated. Put in your job, get a score. The results are as fascinating as they are scary.

The site draws on a 2013 report appropriately entitled The Future of Employment . And it predicts 47% of the total US workforce is at risk.

Yet automation is just one part of a number of trends that are profoundly changing the way we work. While we often think technology is driving these changes, we forget that it’s actually the way we choose to use that technology […]

Hong Kong’s automated-sushi restaurant: An attempt to not interact with any humans

Hong Kong's automated-sushi restaurant: An attempt to not interact with any humans

Workers are frequently told robots are coming for their jobs, while fast food employees are already starting to see automation creep into their places of employment. Along with kiosks popping up at McDonald’s, diners in Japan have been treated to a sushi-making robot, while in California a robot flips burgers .

So with machines on the rise in restaurants, how has it impacted the consumer dining experience? Recently, CNBC tested a sit-down restaurant in Hong Kong where automation has taken over most of the tasks usually performed by servers. The goal was to see if a meal could be consumed […]

3 skills that secure you employment even when all jobs are automated

3 skills that secure you employment even when all jobs are automated

Workers with ordinary skills are rather not safe when the proposed fourth industrial revolution begin or start. Global leaders have expressed concern over the high spate of job automation currently taking over across the world.

A leading investment banker, Goldman Sachs recently hinted that it may consider deploying Artificial Intelligence in its investment decision-making process. This would translate to a loss of millions of jobs across the world.

At the present, the human race is started with competing with time, as there is no better time for a worker to consider developing special skills that computer programmed applications cannot offer.For […]

The Future of Work: The impact of emerging technologies in unemployment

Unemployment is one of the largest problems facing Namibia. There will be more graduates in the next few years in Namibia. Will industry be able to create enough jobs to employ so many graduates, given increasing levels of automation and current employment crisis?

My own concern is about the effects of automation on employment. In my nearly 2 years of being at NUST, I have grown increasingly convinced that Automation will have a major impact on employment.

Indeed automation is already having profound effects on employment, as former assembly line workers, postal employees, and bank tellers will confirm. Some Banks in […]

Human factor keeping jobs growth alive and well

Human factor keeping jobs growth alive and well

Ross Gittins Have you heard that most of the jobs being created in the economy these days are part-time? No? Good. Yes, you have? Sorry, your info’s out of date.

It was true last year, but not this year. As this week’s figures for the labour force from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed, of the 176,000 additional jobs created in the first six months of this year, 93 per cent were full-time.

That, BTW, was an exceptionally rapid annualised rate of growth of 2.9 per cent. Doesn’t sound like the economy’s dead yet.Admittedly, it was a very different story last […]

UBI and automation could be the symbiotic solution for displaced workers

UBI and automation could be the symbiotic solution for displaced workers

As developments in artificial intelligence and robotics advance, there is going to be a severe and swift disruption of many working classes. Large swaths of laborers are going to lose their jobs, leading to unprecedented levels of unemployment.

To account for this problem, having access to basic needs should become a right, not a privilege for the non-automated classes. It should be the responsibility of the corporations that have taken away working-class jobs to grant families this right—and the best solution would be in the form of a universal basic income.

UBI, an economic proposition in which a sum of money […]

Peter Harris proposes later retirement age and a right to go back to school

Peter Harris proposes later retirement age and a right to go back to school

Policy wonks have gathered in frosty Melbourne to take the nation’s economic temperature. Things could be worse, but there are plenty of risks on the horizon. Do we need to convince Australians to work for longer, and make it easier to go back to study?

It’s often said we’re living through an age of uncertainty, but what’s the biggest point of uncertainty for the Australian economy?

Our polarised and often ineffectual politics? A heavily indebted China? Ageing? The budget? Trump? Brexit?Well that’s uncertain too, Productivity Commission chair Peter Harris told the first day of the Melbourne Institute’s Economic and Social Outlook […]

If Silicon Valley is the knowledge work capital of the world, why does it have so many lousy jobs?

If Silicon Valley is the knowledge work capital of the world, why does it have so many lousy jobs?

Over the years, Silicon Valley’s tech elite – Andy Grove of Intel, Eric Schmidt of Google, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook – have paid close attention to the writings of Peter Drucker.

And why not? Besides being celebrated by BusinessWeek as “ the man who invented management ,” Drucker coined the term “knowledge worker” more than half a century ago, anticipating the prosperity and ascendance of those who would make a living with the stuff between their ears, and not with their calloused hands.

“Today the assembly line is obsolescent,” Drucker observed with remarkable foresight in “ Landmarks of Tomorrow ,” his […]

Workplace technology

The author says when automated teller machines (ATMs) were introduced, some thought bank tellers would be out of a job. It is important that we continue learning, both formal and non-formal, to upgrade our skills. Picture: SUPPLIED

LAST week I saw a young adult who had asked me to write a job reference walking by a prominent retail outlet in the Capital City. He looked depressed and I assumed he would recount how a loved one had passed away.

He had a different story to tell. In his new workplace, staff were not allowed to use their smartphones during work hours. […]