Automation Could Wipe Out Almost Half of All Jobs in 20 Years

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By William Horobin April 25, 2019, 3:45 PM GMT+8

Automation, robots and globalization are rapidly changing the workplace and governments must act fast and decisively to counter the effects or face a worsening of social and economic tensions, the OECD warned.

Almost half of all jobs could be wiped out or radically altered in the next two decades due to automation, the Paris-based group said in a report on Tuesday. According to OECD Labor Director Stefano Scarpetta, the pace of change will be “startling.”

Safety nets and training systems built up over decades to protect workers are struggling to keep up with the “megatrends” changing the nature of work, the OECD said. While some workers will benefit as technology opens new markets and increases productivity, young, low-skilled, part-time and gig-economy workers are vulnerable.

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“Deep and rapid structural changes are on the horizon, bringing with them major new opportunities but also greater uncertainty among those who are not well equipped to grasp them,” Scarpetta said.

Read More: The Message for Capitalism Is Quite Simple: Adapt or Die

The employment report is the latest OECD warning about risks to governments in advanced economies, which have already manifested themselves in a surge of support for populist political leaders. The organization has highlighted a squeeze on the middle classes, future jobs losses from technology and a widespread dissatisfaction in rich countries.

Changes in employment will hit some workers more than others — particularly young people with lower levels of education and women who are more likely to be under-employed and working in low paid jobs, the OECD said.

It recommends more training and urges governments to extend protections to workers in the “grey zone,” where a blurring of employment and self-employment often means a lack of rights. The report also warns of “negative ramifications” for social cohesion.

Future of Work Highlights:

  • 14 percent of jobs could disappear from automation in next 15 to 20 years
  • 32 percent likely to change radically from automation
  • One in seven workers are self employed, one in nine on temporary contracts
  • Six out of ten workers lack basic IT skills
  • Union membership has fallen by almost half in the past three decades

Source:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-25/the-future-of-work-could-bring-more-inequality-social-tensions

Coding will be mandatory in Japan’s primary schools from 2020

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Tokyo aims to plug IT worker shortage and catch up to other countries

TOKYO — Computer programming will become a mandatory subject in Japan’s elementary schools from April 2020, as the country seeks to train a new generation in highly sought information technology skills.

The basics of coding will be taught starting in the fifth grade. New textbooks approved by the education ministry on March 26 task students with digitally drawing polygons and making LED lights blink using simple commands, for example.

Students at a Japanese elementary school program a spherical robot’s movements. (Photo by Shihoko Nakaoka)

As IT grows increasingly more rooted in society, international competition in tech is heating up. Japan has gotten off to a slow start on programming education, but now aims to create a broader pool of potential tech workers, exposing children to coding early so that those with the interest and skill can be trained as specialists.

The polygon and LED challenges, suggested under government guidelines for fifth-grade math and sixth-grade science, respectively, were incorporated in most of the textbooks approved for those classes. The aim is to instill the fundamentals of using code to handle information, as well as to teach logical thinking through trial and error.

“Teachers are facing growing burdens, so for now, it’s only realistic to give students a feel for the beginning stages” of programming, said Yuta Tonegawa, head of the education nonprofit Minna no Code, which translates to “Code for Everyone.” Tonegawa cited a need for “classes that get students interested.”

Japan will be short about 290,000 tech workers by 2020 and about 590,000 by 2030 if the IT market grows at a moderate pace, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry calculated in 2016. That year, a government council on industrial competitiveness vowed to make programming mandatory in grade school education.

Programming was made a required part of Japan’s middle school technology and home economics studies from fiscal 2012, and the curriculum is set to be expanded from fiscal 2021. At the high school level, coding will feature in a compulsory information class set to be introduced in fiscal 2022. Japan’s mandatory education stops at middle school.

A number of countries have a head start in teaching children to code. South Korea began working the subject more heavily into elementary and middle school curricula in a 2007 review of its educational system. In 2014, the U.K. introduced programming into mandatory education for students aged 5 to 16.

Making programming part of Japan’s elementary curriculum is “a step forward, but still insufficient compared to other countries,” said Ken Sakamura, a professor of computer science at Toyo University. “We have to flesh out the content, such as by making [programming] its own subject, or else we’ll fall behind the rest of the world.”

Still, bringing mandatory coding education to all students is only part of the battle. Practical hurdles remain, including obtaining and networking classroom computers, as well as training teachers in the subject.

Many of Japan’s expert IT technicians receive training from companies or through their own efforts. A growing number of private universities are also launching graduate schools or departments in the field, like Keio University’s Shonan Fujisawa Campus set up in 1990. But efforts by public schools have been slowed by red tape.

Source:
https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Coding-will-be-mandatory-in-Japan-s-primary-schools-from-2020?fbclid=IwAR06ZJpcqsMnv3b-cv0Dh7IDR7EHjTiFTuJyw-LJh8JF4_eAQGrRRFCD4e4

The future of work won’t be about college degrees, but about job skills

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Today`s employers are not considering college degrees, but job skills. Twenty million students started college this year are less certain whether their degrees will pay off.

According to a survey by Freelancing in America 2018, released Wednesday, freelancers put more value on skills training: 93 percent of freelancers with a four-year college degree say skills training was useful versus only 79 percent who say their college education was useful to the work they do now. In addition, 70 percent of full-time freelancers participated in skills training in the past six months compared to only 49 percent of full-time non-freelancers, CNBC reported.

According to the CNBC, rapid technological change, combined with rising education costs, have made our traditional higher-education system an increasingly anachronistic and risky path. The cost of a college education is so high now that we have reached a tipping point at which the debt incurred often isn’t outweighed by future earnings potential.

Even though, degrees are still thought of as lifelong stamps of professional competency, the future of work won’t be about degrees. More and more, it’ll be about skills. And no one school, whether it be Harvard, General Assembly or Udacity, can ever insulate us from the unpredictability of technological progression and disruption.

What matters to employers now is not whether someone has a computer science degree but how well they can think and how well they can code.

Last year PwC began a pilot program allowing high school graduates to begin working as accountants and risk-management consultants. And this August, jobs website Glassdoor listed “15 more companies that no longer require a degree,” including tech giants such as Apple, IBM and Google. “Increasingly,” Glassdoor reported, “there are many companies offering well-paying jobs to those with nontraditional education or a high-school diploma.”

Google, for example, used to ask applicants for their college GPAs and transcripts; however, as Laszlo Bock — its head of hiring — has explained, those metrics aren’t valuable predictors of an employee’s performance. As a result, Bock told The New York Times a few years ago that the portion of non-college-educated employees at Google has grown over time.

Source:  CNBC/ Stephane Kasriel, CEO of Upwork
https://www.malaysiaworldnews.com/2019/02/22/the-future-of-work-wont-be-about-college-degrees-but-about-job-skills/?fbclid=IwAR261eOpMTjcSlVX2mBgDekjZ7Abuse6L5Dyx6qijrL30RhJ1NU-rf_ekQ8

ByZIININE A.S on February 22, 2019