Tag: Technical

5 trends defining the future of retail

5 trends defining the future of retail

Shutterstock elenabsl Chinese online retailer JD.com recently launched the first fully automated warehouse, where only four employees are needed to do work that previously required 400. Forty German supermarkets tested using facial recognition technology to serve personalized advertisements to customers waiting in checkout lines. Two hundred ninety companies have committed to ensure 100 percent of their plastic packaging can be reused, recycled or composted by 2025.

As the signals of change above show, retail is changing in complex ways, and the future will look quite different from today. We need to prepare for new challenges — such as job loss […]

Jobs are changing, and fast. Here’s what the VET sector (and employers) need to do to keep up

Jobs are changing, and fast. Here’s what the VET sector (and employers) need to do to keep up

This essay is part of a series of articles on the future of education.

Technological developments are expected to majorly, and rapidly, disrupt or change the nature of employment. The multiplier effect of these disruptions interacting with each other has led to what has been termed the fourth industrial revolution (i4.0).

The first industrial revolution took us from agrarian to industrial economies and the second used resources like electricity and steel to create mass production. The third refers to technology advancing from analog and mechanical devices to the digital technology available today.The fourth industrial revolution represents ways technology has become […]

Preparing Education for Industry 4.0

Preparing Education for Industry 4.0

The following is an excerpt from “Towards Education 3.0: The Changing Goalposts for Education” by Chris Goldspink & Robert Kay. To download the full white paper and others in the Corwin Educator Series, click here .

Education has always been concerned with preparing children and young people with the skills and capabilities they need for a full and rewarding future. However, within this statement there exists a significant assumption: that we understand what the future will be. History has shown that as a species we are not particularly good at conceiving of futures that are radically different from what […]

America’s Finest Economists Have Been Needlessly Undermining Growth, Study Confirms

America’s Finest Economists Have Been Needlessly Undermining Growth, Study Confirms

This board could have been more decorated. For much of the past decade, America’s foremost economic thinkers have been struggling to resolve two “mysteries”:

1. Why was the prime-age labor-force participation rate (i.e., the percentage of workers ages 25 to 64 who have a job or want one) stuck so far below its precrisis level?

2. Why was wage growth tepid , even as the unemployment rate dropped near historic lows? Which is to say: If jobs were relatively plentiful, and available labor relatively scarce, then why weren’t workers feeling more emboldened to demand higher pay? Or, viewed from the other […]

What automation means for the gender gap

Mekala Krishnan and Laura Tyson

BERKELEY — Recent trends, and the broader history of technological change, indicate that automation will usher in major shifts in labour markets over the next decade, displacing millions of workers but also creating millions of new jobs that require new skills. The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), having documented these changes for several years, has produced a new report examining how automation might affect men and women differently. A key conclusion of the study is that persistent gender disparities in the workplace, as documented in a previous MGI report, will make it more difficult for […]

Mississippi Jobs: Are Workers Ready for Automation?

Mississippi Jobs: Are Workers Ready for Automation?

Giving Compass’ Take:

• Megan Conn explains why Mississippi jobs are particularly vulnerable to automation and shares ways to improve long-term outcomes for employment in the state.

• How can funders best support Mississippi and other vulnerable places prepare for the future of work? • Learn why automation does not need to be labor-displacing . Rising use of automated technologies has eliminated thousands of jobs in Mississippi, and many more are at risk, according to a recent report by the Brookings Institution. The report looked at the percentage of tasks — that is, what people actually […]

Automation is remaking Mississippi jobs: Are workers ready?

Automation is remaking Mississippi jobs: Are workers ready?

A high school student repairs a car in an automotive shop class. Jobs in automotive body repair are relatively safe from automation, and they don’t require a college degree. Editor’s note: This story led off this week’s Mississippi Learning newsletter, which is delivered free to subscribers’ inboxes with trends and top stories about education in Mississippi. Subscribe today!

Rising use of automated technologies has eliminated thousands of jobs in Mississippi, and many more are at risk, according to a recent report by the Brookings Institution. The report looked at the percentage of tasks — that is, what people actually […]

What automation means for gender gap

What automation means for gender gap

Recent trends, and the broader history of technological change, indicate that automation will usher in major shifts in labour markets over the next decade, displacing millions of workers but also creating millions of new jobs that require new skills. The McKinsey Global Institute, having documented these changes for several years, has produced a new report examining how automation might affect men and women differently. A key conclusion of the study is that persistent gender disparities in the workplace, as documented in a previous MGI report, will make it more difficult for women than for men to adapt to the […]

The Evolution of Work in Urban Labor Markets

The Evolution of Work in Urban Labor Markets

The Google logo adorns the outside of their New York City office, June 3, 2019. Over the past four decades, wage inequality in the U.S. has grown remarkably, with the earnings of the most educated increasing and the earnings of the least educated falling in real terms. But that’s not the whole story. The polarization of employment by educational attainment has been accompanied by—and is likely the result of—a less widely recognized polarization of jobs across regions.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist David Autor gave an interesting keynote address on this topic at the annual conference of MIT’s Initiative on […]

Festival of Work: Why job automation is an opportunity, not a threat

Festival of Work: Why job automation is an opportunity, not a threat

Garry Kasparov shared some insight into what the future workplace might involve. Image: CIPD Job automation was hotly debated by speakers at the CIPD’s Festival of Work conference this week, with many agreeing that it will replace many middle-skilled occupations. But this shouldn’t be seen as a threat to the human workforce, as Ashleigh Webber reports.

Until very recently, job automation and the idea that artificial intelligence (AI) would put swathes of the workforce out of work seemed distant concerns. However, with Amazon recently rolling out 200,000 robots across 50 warehouses and two NHS hospitals in London introducing software […]