Tag: employment

Bring On the Robots: Why Automation Is Good

Bring On the Robots: Why Automation Is Good

The size of the global automation market is forecast to reach $200 billion by 2020. 1 As more industries deploy machines and computers, the labor market is being transformed.

This is one reason why many of us worry that machines will take over our work, leaving us unemployed. But automation has been happening for centuries — more specifically, since the Industrial Revolution. Ever since, some have predicted that automation would cause massive unemployment and make humans obsolete. And today, even the CEOs of tech companies like Facebook 2 and Microsoft 3 make similar claims — adding that, this time, the […]

How AI automation could boost employment: The role of demand

In previous automation revolutions, we’ve seen people move from one pillar of industry to another. We’ve seen people move from agriculture to manufacturing and from manufacturing to services. Every time this has happened the basic skill-set has increased dramatically. Where do people move to when automation starts making deep inroads into services? More importantly, what kind of skill-sets will people need to be valuable in the future and are those skill-sets even plausible for the majority of people?

A former PM in Australia defined the following pillars to our economy: manufacturing, agriculture, services, education, health, transport and commodities.

Automation has made […]

Tamebay Comment: Kerblam! in Doctor Who was an adroit comment on Amazon

Tamebay Comment: Kerblam! in Doctor Who was an adroit comment on Amazon

This is a special report from Tamebay’s expert Doctor Who correspondent Dan Wilson.

Even the TV show Doctor Who is getting in on the action on commenting on online shopping, specifically Amazon, with its recent dystopian episode called Kerblam!. It is a humorous, but insightful, examination of ecommerce and consumer culture. But most tantalising is how it looks at the fulfilment process.

The Doctor is delighted when a delivery arrives in the Tardis. It arrives courtesy of a teleporting robot and it comes in a suitably branded box. The consignment is a fez and she cannot quite recall when she […]

The world keeps turning for state of Illinois manufacturers

The world keeps turning for state of Illinois manufacturers

The East Peoria manufacturing facility of Caterpillar Inc. makes the D10, a trendsetting track-type dozer. | Fred Zwicky/Peoria Journal Star via AP Lucina Miguel has a job unlike any other performed by Illinois’ 571,800 other factory workers. She glues strips of a map of the Earth onto large plastic spheres for Replogle Globes , one of 13,000 manufacturing companies in the state.

That task once fell to founder Luther Replogle, who started making and selling handcrafted spherical creations out of his Chicago apartment in 1930. Success followed over the next several decades and Replogle eventually became one of the largest […]

Keeping up with automation

Keeping up with automation

Last month, news broadcasts announced that an artificial intelligence (AI) news anchor, said to be the world’s first ever, had gone live in China. 1 The AI anchor was modeled after a real-life news presenter, and is said to be learning from live broadcasting videos. The news, as I watched it on television, was accompanied by somewhat anxious-sounding jokes about how, in the future, AI broadcasters might replace the very newscasters who were presenting this story.

While there are numerous concerns about advanced technologies like AI, the fear of job loss, sometimes guised in jokes about “robots taking our jobs,” […]

What Are the Biggest Challenges Faced by Blue-Collar Workers in Asia?

What Are the Biggest Challenges Faced by Blue-Collar Workers in Asia?

As many workers may be desperate for jobs, they tend to put up with unfair treatment and inferior wages, as asking for more could lead to them losing their jobs With two-thirds of Singaporeans projected to hold white-collar jobs by 2030, the blue-collar career pathway is becoming increasingly unattractive to youths. There is a definite stigma attached to blue-collar work, as pay is often lower than in white-collar jobs, and physical labour is thought of as unpleasant. But demand for cleaners and other blue-collar workers has been increasing over the years. In fact, there are increasing skills shortages in […]

John McDonald: The economics of click, ship and wrap

John McDonald: The economics of click, ship and wrap

For the last two holiday seasons, I have bought nothing from a store. It’s all click, ship and wrap for me. We’ve all read the articles about the “death of retail” and closing of traditional retailers nationwide. As the holiday season gets underway, it’s important to recognize that the loss of retail jobs doesn’t mean retail employment is gone forever, but merely shifting.

With Deloitte forecasting a 17 percent to 22 percent increase in e-commerce sales in 2018, more consumers shopping online translates to more job growth in transportation and warehousing. From 2015 to 2016, employment in these industries increased […]

Gwynne Dyer: Populism — It’s the Automation, Stupid

Gwynne Dyer: Populism — It’s the Automation, Stupid

Politicians who take a populist stance, clockwise from top left: Boris Johnson (UK), Viktor Orban (Hungary), Donald Trump (US), Jair Bolsonaro (Brazil), Alexis Tsirpas (Greece). Gwynne Dyer

Five of the world’s largest democracies now have populist governments, claimed The Guardian last week, and proceeded to name four: The United States, India, Brazil and the Philippines. Which is the fifth? At various points it name-checks Turkey, Italy and the United Kingdom, but it never becomes clear which. (And by the way, India’s prime minister Narendra Modi is not a populist. He’s just a nationalist.)

It’s embarrassing when a respected global newspaper […]

G20: Digital change and gig economy rewire the world of work

G20: Digital change and gig economy rewire the world of work

When his daughter was born, Paulo Aguilar, a Chilean entrepreneur, wanted to find a new way of working — one that would allow him to stay at home and see her grow up.

His solution was to log on to Mercado Libre, Latin America’s answer to eBay, to find out what people wanted to buy. Soon he started his own company, Comercial Limax, selling pet accessories from his study, where his daughter could visit whenever she pleased. Five years on, the company is doing well, with a warehouse and a team of eight.

Mr Aguilar is one of many adjusting to […]

The Smart Way to Prepare Your Workforce for Industry 4.0

The Smart Way to Prepare Your Workforce for Industry 4.0

The Hexagon organization is centered on precision measuring technologies like CMM and CPS and adding CAE software capability is an effort to emphasize endtoend solutions for vertical manufacturing supply chains The Hexagon organization is centered on precision measuring technologies, like CMM and CPS, and adding CAE software capability is an effort to emphasize “end-to-end solutions” for vertical manufacturing supply chains.

Is automation the job-killer that it’s been made out to be in the past Maybe not, according to a recent L.E.K. Consulting manufacturing survey.

Automation is motivating the decision-makers we surveyed across seven manufacturing industries to actively invest in their workforce, […]