Tag: productivity

Automation and Disruptive Technologies Will Soon Replace Lower-Skilled Jobs in ASEAN

Automation and Disruptive Technologies Will Soon Replace Lower-Skilled Jobs in ASEAN

A new study by the ILO Bureau for Employers’ Activities examines how technology is affecting workplaces in five major sectors across the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the transformation that enterprises and workers can expect in the next decade.

The report on ASEAN in Transformation: How Technology is Changing Jobs and Enterprises found the potential for growth and employment presented by advanced technologies, such as additive manufacturing, robotics and the Internet of Things (IoT), are considerable.

The report provides critical data on how millions of jobs are going to be impacted in the run up to 2025. However […]

Growth no longer means jobs: Inflexible labour laws, rapid technological change have caused employment generation to stall

Growth no longer means jobs: Inflexible labour laws, rapid technological change have caused employment generation to stall

Where are the jobs? This is the question Prime Minister Narendra Modi is repeatedly asked by his political opponents. One answer he has given recently in media interviews is that the jobs that are being created are invisible in the statistics: loans from the Mudra Bank are enabling self-employment, and as these micro businesses grow, they will add employees, one or two at a time. Hopefully, they will ultimately create millions of jobs in an economy that is releasing one million youth every month into the job market.

While creating a nation of micro-entrepreneurs is better than doing nothing, there […]

ILO: Low-skilled workers risk being replaced by advanced technology

ILO: Low-skilled workers risk being replaced by advanced technology

Asian workers at a garments production facility. Image from UN-ILO. MANILA – Some 56 percent of salaried workers in the Philippines and four other ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries are "at high risk of displacement" due to advances in technology over the next couple of decades, a report of the International Labour Organization (ILO) revealed.

Based on a new study by ILO’s Bureau for Employers’ Activities, titled ASEAN in Transformation: How Technology is Changing Jobs and Enterprises, the potential for growth and employment presented by advanced technologies, "such as additive manufacturing, robotics and the Internet of Things (IoT), […]

Robots are set to take the jobs of millions of Asian workers in the coming years

Robots are set to take the jobs of millions of Asian workers in the coming years

Workers at a garment factory in Vietnam In the next few decades, about 56% of all salaried workers in Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam could be displaced by automation and advanced technologies, such as 3D printing. That’s the conclusion of an extensive series of new studies by the International Labour Organization (ILO).

Mass-scale displacement won’t happen overnight, but it’s already in the works. Robots, for instance, are increasingly handling the labor previously done by low-skilled workers in industries such as automotive and electronics manufacturing. For governments and employers willing to educate and train workers for new, high-tech jobs, […]

White House economist: Don’t fear the rise of the robots (He’s right)

How much should we fear the “rise of the robots”? (And I mean this from the perspective of worker employment, not human survival.) In a speech today on artificial intelligence and automation, White House economist Jason Furman gives a pretty reasonable and defensible perspective. No, smart machines aren’t going to take all our jobs.

That’s not really the issue, as he sees it. Rather, “it is that workers will either lack the skills or the ability to successfully match with the good, high paying jobs created by automation.” In a short-run that could last decades, “not all workers will have […]

Southeast Asia – Robot age could leave half of workers without jobs in the next 20 years

A new study by the ILO (International Labour Organization) Bureau for Employers’ Activities, ASEAN in transformation: How technology is changing jobs and enterprises , shows that more than half of workers in five Southeast Asian countries are at risk for losing their jobs to robots in the next 20 years.

The report examines how technology is affecting workplaces in five major sectors across the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the transformation that enterprises and workers can expect in the next decade.

It shows that low-skill workers will find themselves displaced in favour of automation, and more than 60% […]

If automation is the future, what comes next?

If automation is the future, what comes next?

Tanner Mirrlees Instead of hiring workers, many companies are employing new technology. No job seems safe from automation.

The factories of the world are filled with gigantic robotic arms programmed to put together everything from BMV luxury automobiles to Apple iPhones. Assembly lines are working with fewer blue collars.

Distribution warehouses, like those run by Amazon.com, employ robotic dollies to fill and carry shelves of books and beauty accessories to the small human workforce that packs these goods into the boxes mailed to our doors.Customer service is being designed away by user-friendly interfaces that shift tasks once done by paid workers […]

Barack Obama wrong about size of U.S. steel production, work force

Barack Obama wrong about size of U.S. steel production, work force

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, share a laugh with U.S. President Barack Obama after his address to Parliament in Ottawa, on June 29, 2016. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via AP) Activity at the ArcelorMittal coke factory, which currently employs about 180 people, in Monessen, Pa., on June 30, 2016. (Jeff Swensen/New York Times) When Donald Trump made a high-profile speech outlining his approach to trade, he did it in Monessen, Pa., a town near Pittsburgh where a big steel mill has been shuttered for the past three decades.

A day after Trump’s speech, Barack […]

The Enemies of Economic Independence

The founders sought more than political independence from Europe. They also sought to secure America’s economic independence. To that end, the second bill enacted by the first Congress was the Tariff Act of 1789 , the stated purpose of which was "the encouragement and protection of manufactures." The end result of America’s reliance on the tariff was both prosperity and economic independence, as American manufacturing became the envy of the world and Americans ended up relying on fellow Americans for most of the goods they purchased. This happy situation was brought to an end by our elites’ fatuous embrace […]

Robots are responsible for low wages, Trump and the Brexit

Robots are responsible for low wages, Trump and the Brexit

For decades, economic textbooks have highlighted the golden relationship between productivity and wages. As workers are able to produce more, employees reap the gains in the form of higher wages.

But this is no longer the case. View gallery . Wages and productivity climbed in lockstep between 1950 and 1980. However, there is a striking divergence between the 1980s and today. Even with the unemployment rate near multi-decade lows, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen highlighted concerns about the lack of wage growth and underemployment during her speech at Harvard last month.

“We’re close to an unemployment rate that I think most […]