“Automation will soon eliminate millions upon millions of jobs. And while new jobs will certainly be created, it is unclear whether people will be able to learn the necessary new skills, fast enough…”
— Author and historian Yuval Noah Harari, presenting at the January 2020 meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
I’ve had the pleasure of working in public schools, and also had the pleasure of homeschooling my own children. Both types of work have provided learning experiences, for me. And growing up in a household, where my father taught in public schools for his entire career, and where my mother worked as a housewife for her entire career, provided different, but also valuable, learning experiences.
Starting an online news magazine 16 years ago, at age 52, has been yet another chance to learn new things.
My working hypothesis for this editorial series incorporates the idea that we never stop learning, as long as we live. As we grow older, however, it becomes progressively more difficult to let go of the intellectual and emotional baggage we’ve accumulated along the way — even when that baggage has become useless, or even harmful. That applies to a society, as well as an individual.
It applies to organizations, including those claiming to provide ‘education’.
While researching this editorial series, I stumbled upon a 163-page report, The Future of Jobs Report 2020, published this past October by the World Economic Forum, an organization presumably saddled with its own intellectual and emotional baggage, but one that strives to see things with eyes wide open. (You can download the 11MB file here.)
On pages 153 and 154, the Report lists a number of 63 “competencies” that potential employees may or may not have, and that may or may not be necessary for certain types of future jobs.
- Active learning
- Analytical thinking
- Attention to detail
- Integrity
- Time management
- Initiative
- Cooperation
- Social perceptiveness
- Physical strength abilities
- Fine manipulative abilities
- Attentiveness
- Perceptual abilities…
The list goes on, listing and describing competencies of various types. One of the 63 competencies is “Reading comprehension”.
If education is nominally aimed at preparing young people for a productive future as members of a complex society, what should that preparation look like? (Some might propose that public schools prepare students for a world that existed 50 years ago, and I would be sorely tempted to agree with that perspective.)
Is “Reading comprehension” the Number One competency needed?
The Future of Jobs Report 2020 attempts to present a picture of how employment will change over the next five years, with an endpoint at 2025. This makes the predictions less useful, if we are trying to make a guess what the world of work will look like in 2030, when today’s third graders — particularly the ones who, in Colorado, are failing to read at a third-grade level — are entering college or heading out into the job market. But maybe the report gives us something to chew on?
From the report:
The reallocation of current tasks between human and machine is already in motion. Figure 21 presents the share of current tasks at work performed by human vs. machine in 2020 and forecasted for 2025 according to the estimates and planning of senior executives today…
What this chart shows is the trend to hand jobs of all kinds over to computers and robots, when “companies” are surveyed. The pale gold line indicated the percentage of jobs, in each category, now handled by machines… while the darker gold line show the predicted percentage in 2025. The vertical black lines show the “human-machine frontier” for 2025. Well over half of the current “Information and data processing” jobs will be handled by machines within five years. More than one-third of “Reasoning and decision-making” jobs will be handled by machines.
Interestingly enough, even today, 30% of “physical and manual work activities” are now handled by machines, in the companies surveyed… and within another five years, the percentage will be closer to 50%. Or so they say.
Just to be clear, these are jobs with “companies” surveyed by the World Economic Forum, and based on the opinions of “senior executives”. Here in the US, about 10 percent of total US employment is ‘self-employment’. I presume that these types jobs were not tracked by WEF. (The Daily Post, for example, has no plans to automate our operations.) In a rural community like Pagosa Springs, the number of jobs created by self-employment is closer to 30%.
But looking at the chart, above, the WEF is suggesting that — in every job type listed — the ongoing trend is to replace human employees with machines. In several of these job categories, machines will be handling about half of the necessary work by 2025. Or so they say.
Were a company to eventually depend entirely upon machine labor, there would be no need to worry about labor unions, or subsidize health insurance, or contribute to retirement plans. If your goal, as a company, is to make the most money possible with a minimum of employee complaints and screw-ups, this trend is certainly a positive one.
Here’s historian Yuval Noah Harari, speaking last January to the World Economic Forum.
“…AI [artificial intelligence] is nowhere near its full potential. Jobs will disappear. New jobs will appear, but then the new jobs will rapidly change and vanish.
“In the past, humans had to struggle against exploitation. In the 21st century, the really big struggle will be against irrelevance. And it’s much worse to be irrelevant, than to be exploited.”
We are on the verge, says Mr. Harari, of creating a massive “useless class” of workers who will have no way to participate in productive industries. This is not merely an American issue; it’s a global problem.
The archaeologists tell us that humans began to live in permanent settlements in about 9000 BC, thanks to the dawn of agriculture — planted crops, and domesticated animals. In the 1880s, half of America’s working population were employed in agriculture, while the other half worked at various other jobs. Manufacturing. Retail. Resource extraction. Healthcare. Construction. Government. Teaching.
Today, less than 2 percent of US workers are employed in agriculture, yet we are still growing enough food to feed 330 million Americans… and have enough leftover to export. (As of 2020, the US still exports more food than it imports.) Millions of American farm jobs have disappeared, and new types of jobs — jobs that might be, on some level, less ‘necessary’ than those that provide food — have appeared. Some of those 20th century jobs have been disappearing, gradually, over the past 50 years. Now, the automation process looks to be accelerating.
How will we ensure that our citizens have meaningful, productive work in 2030? Or 2050?
Does public education have a role in devising a solution?
Bill Hudson began sharing his opinions in the Pagosa Daily Post in 2004 and can’t seem to break the habit. He claims that, in Pagosa Springs, opinions are like pickup trucks: everybody has one.