Robots changing workplace
Imagine you’re a young worker, pondering your job prospects in the economy of the future. Your grades weren’t stellar — what kind of career should you look for?
Many traditional working-class jobs — from factory assembly line work to administrative work to retail sales to tending bar — are being replaced by automated technology.
An immediate challenge is to restructure vocational schools to prepare students to do jobs that robots can’t and to take advantage of technology in new ways. Three skills in particular will be useful in the new economy, as Frank Levy and Richard Murnane argued in a report for the research group Third Way: solving unstructured problems, working with new information and doing manual tasks that can’t easily be automated.
Probably the most important step vocational schools can take is to help kids understand how to work alongside robots and other automated systems. Car mechanics will need to know about self-driving technology. Firefighters may be working alongside the Firefighting Robotic Scout, which can drive into burning buildings, detect dangerous gases and find vulnerable people.
Blue-collar jobs of the future will become more technologically sophisticated, and workers will need to know how to adapt quickly as their job descriptions change. Vocational education can prepare students by fostering skills such as problem-solving and communication, and by shifting away from the narrow occupational training — because such training will quickly grow obsolete.