The debate around the impact of automation on jobs has been gradually moving in a more nuanced direction in the last year or so, as we’ve seen a shift from blunt thinking that machines will do everything, to an understanding that most jobs are made up of numerous tasks, some of which are suited to automation, and some of which are not.
The latest attempt to understand this future of work comes via a new study undertaken by the JRC and the University of Salamanca. The work is interesting because it looks at automation through the lens of that most combustible of topics: migration. Across much of the western world there has been a poisonous political narrative around migration, with the likes of the rise of Donald Trump and Britain’s departure from the European Union predicated on a response to largescale migration into the United States and the United Kingdom respectively.
Automation and migration
The report explores the kind of jobs that are currently being done by migrants, and then examines the make up of those jobs in terms of the tasks they perform. It finds that as many as 50% of migrants, especially those from outside the EU, are performing tasks that are not only relatively easy to automate, but also commercially worthwhile automating.
“Both EU mobile citizens and third country nationals have a higher likelihood of being employed in jobs with high automation potential than nationals, even when socio-demographic characteristics are taken into account,” the authors say. “However, the likelihood decreases as educational attainment increases, for all, but more so for migrants.”
This represents something of a challenge for governments however, as the report clearly identifies migrants as requiring specific policies and attention to help them respond to the challenges provoked by automation, whether in terms of education and training or social protection. This comes at a time when anti-immigrant hostilities are high in many parts of the world however, so providing such policies may be politically difficult.
Interestingly, there seemed to be time differentials between EU migrants and third country nationals, with EU migrants more likely to be in jobs with a risk of automation in the short-term, but this likelihood decreases with time. Third country migrants, by contrast, were the opposite, with the longer their stay in a country, the greater their likelihood of being in jobs with a high risk of automation.
The Skills Agenda for Europe
I’ve written before about the dire state of training provision in the UK, and specifically among those most at risk from technological disruption, and this is a conclusion shared by the EU report. It finds that EU migrants and non-EU migrants are less likely to receive training than natives.
“This lower investment in the human capital of migrants can hamper migrants’ opportunities to transition to other jobs should they lose their jobs due to the digital transformation,” the researchers say.
The EU’s Skills Agenda for Europe has 10 actions that they believe will ensure that the training and development is available to residents of the EU. It also contains specific recommendations to identify and profile the skills of migrants so that they can be given specific support.
This has been accompanied by the Upskilling Pathways initiative, which aims to help low-skilled adults strengthen basic skills and align those skills with the needs of the labor market.
Labor market reform
It’s part of wider changes to the labor market that has seen the rise in freelancing or gig economy work. The EU report highlights this in the context of migration, stating that both EU and non-EU migrants are more likely to be in short-term or fixed-term contracts that not only afford minimal security but also minimal investment in skills.
It’s seen work by the likes of the UK’s Royal Society of Arts to encourage good jobs rather than just jobs, and to better understand the shifting employment landscape so that policy makers can provide better support for people in the gig economy.
As we see a gradual move away from the linear ‘train>work>retire’ model towards ‘learn>work>learn>work>rest>learn…’ it underlines Alvin Toffler’s famous prediction that the “illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”
Much of the existing training and development infrastructure was predicated on a labor market that was stable and predictable, with a consistency of career progression that is being consigned to the past. As we move into an ever more volatile and uncertain time where the half-life of skills is shrinking will require a shift in mindset from individuals, employers and policy makers. Time will tell if it’s a mindset that we’re successful in cultivating.
