Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Largest annual report for energy employment launches.

Largest annual report for energy employment launches.

The Global Energy Talent Index (GETI), the world’s largest energy recruitment and employment trends report, has opened for responses to its second annual survey. The survey is intended to take a deep dive into the rise of automated technology and its potential impact on the future of energy workplaces.

Last year’s report by Airswift and Energy Jobline featured insights from more than 16,000 energy professionals and hiring managers in 156 countries across five industry sub-sectors: oil and gas, renewables, power, nuclear and petrochemicals.

This year’s survey is even more ambitious. Not only will it build upon a number of last year’s […]

Rise Of The Robots

Rise Of The Robots

From autonomous cars to window cleaning robots that allow you to sit back while they do the hard work, the potential of robotics continues to expand.

As we increasingly see robots enter into our private and public lives and hear dramatic projections of mass automation, it’s worth remembering that they have long been a reality in the world of manufacturing. Since the 1960s, large, industrial robots have been used in industries such as automotive, to speed up processes and relieve humans from more strenuous tasks. These gains inevitably led to growth, which in turn created more jobs.

But in an industrial […]

Building future-ready tech skills.

Building future-ready tech skills.

There is a lot of buzz around how the rise of artificial intelligence and AI will make human workers redundant, especially in highly repetitive and transactional tasks. One such area is technology, which keeps changing at a breakneck speed, making existing skills obsolete. With this looming threat of lost jobs and livelihoods, it is enterprises’ responsibility to create new jobs that are future-relevant. Already, the IT and ITeS sector is reeling under the bouts of automation. It is high time HR and business leaders take things in their hands, by enabling people to take up different kinds of jobs […]

How fast can our economy grow at full employment?

How fast can our economy grow at full employment?

It’s August, the start of the fall semester, and a good time to figure out what’s going on in the economy. There are some new limits on what can happen, because we’re close to full employment.

When the economy is not at full employment, there are more people searching for work than there are jobs available. When a job opens up, there are people to fill it. There are empty business rentals searching for occupants. When a tenant shows up, a new business will open. There are factories operating at less than full capacity. When an order arrives, production expands.

An […]

First the robots will take our jobs, then they’ll kill us. Really?

First the robots will take our jobs, then they’ll kill us. Really?

Once again, calls to tame the threat from robots have led to headlines evoking the Terminator film franchise . The notion that humans are creating a new species that will turn on us and wipe us out is one that seizes the popular imagination. But it’s science fiction.

The fact is, we don’t need to create a new race of super-intelligent robots to wipe out the human race. We’re perfectly capable of doing it ourselves, whether by instigating all-out nuclear war, or by fueling global warming. AI is simply another tool within our power that has the potential to destroy […]

Watch: When (ex-)Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka spoke on AI, learning, jobs (his chairman wasn’t watching)

Days after tech pioneer Vishal Sikka stepped down from his position at Infosys as its CEO and Managing Director, he posted on his blog a speech that he had delivered to the graduating class of the University of Queensland in December 2016, where he was also given an Honorary Doctorate.

In his speech (above), he gave the students a glimpse of what to look forward to in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how it would affect their jobs in the future. “In an age of automation, we need to learn, not only to keep up but, to live and thrive,” he […]

Rising wages may be killing jobs

Rising wages may be killing jobs

Tharman blasts HR in Budget attack on ageism HR leaders have been urged by Deputy PM Tharman Shanmugaratnam to stop their “unstated discrimination” against older workers looking for jobs.

Are you asking illegal interview questions? Have you ever asked a job applicant how old they are? If you have, you might be breaking the law. A leading Singapore employment lawyer looks at which interview questions could land you in hot water.

A new study by the US-based National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) suggests that government-mandated raises to minimum wage may not actually be helping low-skilled workers, […]

How will AI shape the workforce of the future?

How will AI shape the workforce of the future?

Will artificial intelligence bring a utopia of plenty? Or a dystopic hellscape? Will we, jobless and destitute, scavenge for scraps outside the walls of a few techno-trillionaires? Or will we work alongside machines, achieving new levels of productivity and fulfillment? The tech world has no lack of prognosticators: Bill Gates and Elon Musk, for example, see in AI an existential threat to the human species, while Ray Kurzweil thinks it can’t come soon enough.

Silicon Slopes and big data

In fact, artificial intelligence is already here, and has been for some time. While many mistakenly equate AI with consciousness—Hollywood […]

History offers a reassuring message on automation

History offers a reassuring message on automation

I am often asked to opine about whether automation will destroy all the jobs. Yes, we talk about tractors, which brought farm employment from something like 70 percent in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century to about 3 percent today. And about cars, which put the horse drivers out of business. And about trains, which put the canal boats out of business.

A more recent case has occurred to me, however. It’s the one represented by the photo at the top of this page. It may look unfamiliar to some today, but this is what offices […]

Higher Minimum Wages Will Give High Tech a Boost

Higher Minimum Wages Will Give High Tech a Boost

David Neumark, an economist at the University of California-Irvine, could safely be called a minimum-wage skeptic . Neumark has written a number of papers on the topic , all of which have found that minimum wages reduce employment by substantial amounts. This makes him a bit of an outlier in terms of the overall research consensus , which tends to find modest or no employment effects.

But unlike many researchers, who maintain a laser-like focus on the question of whether minimum wage cuts jobs in the short term, Neumark has examined the policy from many angles. A recent paper of […]