Around 85 million jobs, many held by some of the world’s most economically vulnerable people, will be lost because of automation and robots in the next five years, according to a new report by the World economic Forum (WEF).

But the report also says nearly 100 million new jobs will be created by the green economy, artificial intelligence and the so called ‘care economy’.

The pandemic has dramatically sped up the process by which the global labour market is changing, the report says. But it is not all bad news for workers.

While the report says that many workers will need to learn new skills to remain in their jobs past the year 2025, it also predicts that 97 million new jobs will emerge in new industries.

The ‘Future of Jobs 2020′ report was released at the WEF’s Jobs Reset Summit event which aimed to “proactively shape more inclusive, fair and sustainable economies, organizations, societies and workplaces.”

Around 300 companies were surveyed for the report, with 80 per cent of business executives saying they were speeding up plans to use new technologies in their businesses that would render several existing jobs obsolete.

The report says the COVID-19 pandemic-induced lockdowns and related global recession of 2020 have created a highly uncertain outlook for the labour market and accelerated the arrival of the future of work.

It says the pandemic has had a gigantic impact on workers around the world. Several millions have lost their jobs because of it, while it has also rapidly brought to life a new era of people working from home.

Also among the report’s key findings are that the pace of technology adoption is expected to remain unabated and may accelerate in some areas.

“The adoption of cloud computing, big data and e-commerce remain high priorities for business leaders, following a trend established in previous years. However, there has also been a significant rise in interest for encryption, non-humanoid robots and artificial intelligence,” the report says.

It says automation, in tandem with the COVID-19 recession, is creating a ‘double-disruption’ scenario for workers.

“In addition to the current disruption from the pandemic-induced lockdowns and economic contraction, technological adoption by companies will transform tasks, jobs and skills by 2025,” the report says.

“Forty-three per cent of businesses surveyed indicate that they are set to reduce their workforce due to technology integration, 41 per cent plan to expand their use of contractors for task-specialized work, and 34 per cent plan to expand their workforce due to technology integration,” it says.

By 2025, the time spent on current tasks at work by humans and machines will be equal. A significant share of companies also expect to make changes to locations, their value chains, and the size of their workforce due to factors beyond technology in the next five years.

The report says that although the number of jobs destroyed will be surpassed by the number of ‘jobs of tomorrow’ created, in contrast to previous years, job creation is slowing while job destruction accelerates

It says skills gaps will continue to be high as in-demand skills across jobs change in the next five years. The top skills and skill groups which employers see as rising in prominence in the lead up to 2025 include groups such as critical thinking and analysis as well as problem-solving, and skills in self-management such as active learning, resilience, stress tolerance and flexibility.

“On average, companies estimate that around 40 per cent of workers will require reskilling of six months or less and 94 per cent of business leaders report that they expect employees to pick up new skills on the job, a sharp uptake from 65 per cent in 2018,” the report says.

The future of work has already arrived for a large majority of the online white-collar workforce, the report says.

Eighty-four percent of employers are set to rapidly digitalise working processes, including a significant expansion of remote work—with the potential to move 44 per cent of their workforce to operate remotely.

To address concerns about productivity and well-being, about one-third of all employers expect to also take steps to create a sense of community, connection and belonging among employees through digital tools, and to tackle the well-being challenges posed by the shift to remote work.

The report says the advance of technology couple with the COVID recession will be a driver of inequality.

“In the absence of proactive efforts, inequality is likely to be exacerbated by the dual impact of technology and the pandemic recession. Jobs held by lower wage workers, women and younger workers were more deeply impacted in the first phase of the economic contraction,” it says.

The report says online learning and training is on the rise but looks different for those in employment and those who are unemployed.

“There has been a four-fold increase in the numbers of individuals seeking out opportunities for learning online through their own initiative, a five-fold increase in employer provision of online learning opportunities to their workers and a nine-fold enrolment increase for learners accessing online learning through government programs,” the report says.

Other findings include: that the window of opportunity to reskill and upskill workers has become shorter in the newly constrained labour market; that large majority of employers recognize the value of human capital investment, and; that companies need to invest in better metrics of human and social capital through adoption of environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics and matched with renewed measures of human capital accounting.

The report also said governments needed to provide stronger support for reskilling and upskilling for at-risk or displaced workers.

Read full report: https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2020