Issues and solutions
A few years ago, robots had taken jobs in manufactures, and factory workers lost their jobs. Last year, robots with Artificial Intelligence (AI) have taken the work in offices, and office workers began to lose their job. Many people believe that automation only happens in the U.S. and Europe where labor costs are high, but NOT in Asia. They are wrong because today, there are more robots in China, S. Korea, and Japan than the U.S. and Europe, and soon automation will spread throughout the developing world. The reason is factory owners do not want to lose their profitable business to automation and to keep their business they have to automate their factories with robots resulting in more human workers will lose their job.
Many people ask: “If machines can do the work than what can people do?” The answer is: “As robots do the work in the factory, people can be re-trained in new jobs such as building robots or managing them.” Today there is a mismatch in the job market between what company need and the kind of education people are getting. Many education systems are obsolete and cannot meet the needs of the fast-changing societies and must be replaced. In this technology-driven world, I believe every students must learn technology as the needed skills, similar to reading, writing, and arithmetic. A high school education is NOT enough. Students need to have at least a two years college training in technology to get a job in this competitive market.
According to an industry report, last year (2016) more than four million jobs went unfilled in the U.S. and Europe because there were not enough skilled workers. Of those, over two million jobs require a college education. This year, over two million new jobs will be created, and all of them require a college degree, especially in the technology areas. For many years, companies have complained that many college graduates lack of specific technical skills require to get the job done. Many executives said that young people, especially college students, should study technology instead of areas that do not have a need to reduce the unemployment.
Many economists begin to join in this view as they see multiple economic opportunities on both a micro and macro level. From a large scale view, there is factor such as the growing population around the world and the aging of populations in most developed countries. As more workers are reaching their retirement age, there is an urgent need to replace them, but automation and robots cannot do the job, without some human involvement. As aging factor is accelerated, there is a large emerging young population is growing in Africa and Asia, and if they are properly trained, it can change the balance of the global economy. A well-known economist wrote: “How will we feed these growing young population in Africa and Asia? We need to train them to do productive works and grow their economies; else we will face a disaster of wars, famines, and diseases that can spread to many countries. What will happen if these growing young population cannot take care of themselves and their families? Some will turn into extreme terrorists. In this global economy, we do not have borders anymore. No country can prosper while the next country is suffering in economy, may things can spread quickly and destabilizes the whole region.”
The only feasible solution to keep the economy stable is to quickly educate people in science and technology so they can take care of themselves. With advance in technology, especially in food science, computer science, communication, and healthcare, there are many job opportunities that need workers, if and only if, we could improve the education system and produce skilled workers to meet the demands and grow the economy. If we cannot act quickly, the future would be very bleak.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
