How to Keep Your Job

Robotics has begun to replace labor. Many companies are now using roboticsbased technology to improve productivity and accelerate processes. The other way in which technology leads to re-balancing of jobs is when new developments in technology dumb down complexities so much that experts are no longer required. For example, the process of analytics is now largely automated; visually rich analysis makes it easier for humans to consume and use the intelligence, and we no longer need data analysts and visualizers in this part of the business process.

In short, some jobs would cease to exist, some would need reskilling, and many new jobs that require new skills would appear.

Let’s look at some numbers to get a sense of the situation. A study conducted by EY, Ficci, and Nasscom suggest that in the year 2022, about 9 percent of the workforce would be in jobs that don’t exist today and 37 percent would be in jobs that require radically new skills. According to HFS Research, there would be 35 percent decrease in low-skilled workers in India’s IT and BPO sector. New age technologies such as 5G, IoT, and AI could impact white collar jobs such as doctors, accountants, and teachers.

So, what are the safe career choices for the future? What is the prognosis for people who are just getting into the workforce? How do they make themselves relevant and valuable? Apart from constant reskilling, what is the most important loss-proofing career strategy?

A working paper at National Bureau for Economic Research (NBER) titled ‘The Growing Importance of Social Skills in the Labor Market (August 2015)’ by David J. Deming offers some answers. The paper highlights the importance of social skills over cognitive and technical skills.

Deming argues that social skills have already become increasingly important in recent decades, especially for those looking for high-wage, competitive positions. According to Deming, positions that require both cognitive and social skills have shown more wage growth in the past few decades than those that require high-levels of mathematical or analytical training but little social prowess. And those wage gains hold true across all levels of employment.

In the future, the jobs that are least likely to be automated increasingly are those that demand lots of interaction with coworkers or clients. These jobs also call for the ability to perform innately human exercises— like pondering another person’s point of view. These nuances of human interact interaction are something that computers have yet to master.