Copyright Ian Pearson, BT Futurologist

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Future impacts of technology on the labour market

Ian Pearson, Futurologist

Many jobs didn't exist a decade ago. Think of people who design web sites or ring tones for mobiles. New technology creates new jobs, but can eradicate jobs too. As technology change accelerates, we can expect changes in the labour market, mainly due ultimately to artificial intelligence. Industrial robots have made their mark already. Robotics is expensive, and we have seen that many low-paid physical and service industry jobs have been unaffected - sadly, some people cost too little to be worth automating. It will be quite some time before we replace cleaners by robots. Future impact will be felt most in administration, agencies and knowledge work.

Many people are employed as smart cogs in big machines. Machines will replace them. Administrative and agency jobs will be frequently eliminated over the next few years, adding up to perhaps a third of employees in big companies. Knowledge workers will follow soon after. Much knowledge work is simply reciting knowledge from mental databases, making simple judgements, or completing fairly simple analysis - fodder for future expert systems. People win where tasks are complex, knowledge is less explicit, or judgement needs knowledge that machines can't access. This will not always be so. Each generation of computers has faster processing, but also an increased scope, and can tackle new kinds of tasks. Computers are increasingly the location of our information, and their tools ever more refined. Since they do most of the basic conversion of raw data into human knowledge, and can manipulate far more variables than humans, more and more of so-called human knowledge is actually just a thin surface layer of machine knowledge. We are only told those bits that our limited scope for knowledge retention can cope with - humans are strained manipulating even seven pieces of information at once. The final hurdle, unwritten tacit knowledge, becomes less relevant each time a human process is replaced by computers. So we have a vicious circle that will see humans cut out of most of the knowledge and information processing roles, as well as in high-cost mechanical roles. So what will be left?

Fortunately, few people only do knowledge work. Most jobs include a proportion of human centric activity, which is harder to automate. This work includes some management, leadership, influencing, counselling, teaching, policing, entertaining, sports, personal services, and care work. As other areas of work are automated, human-centric parts will expand, and ultimately form the basis of the economy. Let's call it the care economy. For example, in call centres, automated voice response could already deal with most routine calls. Some managers may make some such workers redundant, but better managers will move them up the value chain, allowing them to deal with more complex calls, offer more personal help, and make callers feel warm about doing business with their company. Almost instant response for simple transactions will come via computers. Machines effectively force us to concentrate on being human. This is likely to protect customer facing jobs, even while internal jobs are eradicated. Companies of the future will have a visible human shell and a machine core.

New technologies will continue to supply new jobs, but these will mostly be transient, and can quickly be automated, outsourced, or replaced by the next technology wave. New jobs may be balanced by increasing levels of automation in other parts of the life cycle. While we may see some modest overall gains from new technology, all we can reasonably hope for is that the numbers working in technology development might remain reasonably static.

Although people in knowledge professions start their careers doing intellectual work, they gradually progress into interpersonal work. At senior manager level, they focus on negotiating deals, influencing and entertaining existing and potential clients, or using their human knowledge, experience and political skills to work out cunning strategies. New technology may accelerate progression to this stage. There should be sufficient latent demand to achieve this, since increasing turbulence in the economy due to technology change will increase the need for professional services. Even with computers doing most of the actual work, there will remain a strong demand for people in the professions to act as the interface. So the numbers of people in the professions may again stay fairly static.

There will be some interesting changes. Hospital consultants are highly paid mainly because of their high skill level, being able to rapidly analyse a problem, determine the treatment, and implement it. Smart, high precision robots may automate much of the high skill work, effectively de-skilling it. Consultants could care for more patients, and the consultant role could be opened to lower skilled staff, eventually reducing the remuneration for the role. Nurses may also get some mechanical assistance, but the caring side of their role is essentially human. Nurses can't be automated, but most of a consultant's work can. So in some ways, nurses are more valuable.

The proportion of people working the land will continue to decrease and manufacturing will gradually emigrate to the Far East, then South America. Robots and computers will have a similar impact on physical services. In the future, most routine work will be done by armies of machines, but we will have a lot more personal service. The economy will grow as machines increase productivity.

Summarising, low paid workers, professions, technology support workers, and public facing employees, will retain their share of the working population, but administrators, agents and knowledge workers will decline. The human contact service economy will grow. In total, the care economy today employs about a fifth of our workforce, rising to about half over the next two decades. People will mostly be happy to cease being cogs in a machine, and will rejoice in having more human contact in their jobs. Inevitably, some will be unwilling or unable to make the transition, and we will still have some unemployment, but most people that want to work will still be able to find a useful role. As we move into the care economy, we will discover what it really means to be human.