A new report via the World Economic Forum, dubbed “The Future of Jobs”, posits that robots could claim as many as 5 million jobs previously performed by humans within the next five years.
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Bloomberg reported that about seven million jobs will be lost and two million gained as a result of technological change in 15 major developed and emerging economies, WEF founder Klaus Schwab and managing board member Richard Samans said in “The Future of Jobs”.
“These rates are still too low, reflecting a whole host of factors that hold women back worldwide, and that we’re working to unpick, through initiatives like our Global Gender Gap report and Gender Task Forces”, said a post on the WEF’s website highlighting the women who are attending the 2016 gathering.
In addition, the report says women as a whole will lose more jobs than they gain because they are employed in industries that will be greatly affected.
It found that as many as 7.1 million jobs in the world’s richest countries could be lost through redundancy and automation.
“We must transition away from our past; shift the focus from learning what we already know to an education focused on exploring what hasn’t happened yet”, he said in response to the findings.
The jobs most at risk of being replaced by machines are those in “administrative and routine white-collar office functions”.
The industry that stands to create the most jobs is, unsurprisingly, information and communication technology, followed by professional services and media, entertainment and information professionals.
The rise of robots and artificial intelligence will wipe out over five million jobs by 2020, with women expected to be the worst hit, according to new research.
Mali’s President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and Tunisia’s Prime Minister, Habbib Essid whose countries have in the recent past suffered some attacks from extremist groups, will be part of a panel that will discuss how to address global security issues.
Each year the event has a theme – and this year it is “Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution”.
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Despite the digital revolution threatening to take over millions of jobs, however, some specifically skilled workers such as sales representatives or data analysts will likely be in increased demand. That underscores the need to reexamine why women aren’t pursuing so-called STEM fields, or science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Those developments will lead to widespread disruption not only in business models, but also in labor markets, “with enormous change predicted in the skill sets needed to thrive in the new landscape”.
