According to the world economic forum's "future employment report 2018" released on Monday (September 17), by 2022, machines will cover 42% of the world's work tasks, much higher than the current 29%. In 2025, three years later, the share of machines will further increase to 52%.
Based on a survey of 12 industries and 20 developed and emerging economies (accounting for 70% of global GDP), the report shows that in terms of total working hours, no work is expected to be mainly done by machines or algorithms. But in the future, this version of the map will change, and the share of machines in management, decision-making, searching and receiving relevant information will continue to expand.
For example, by 2022, 62% of the information data processing, information search and transmission work in an organization will be taken over by machines, which is obviously higher than the current 46%.
As a result, 75 million jobs will be replaced by machines by 2022. However, the report points out that if there is appropriate employment skills retraining, 133 million new jobs will be created in the world by then, and the labor prospect is still quite optimistic.
In terms of different industries, data entry personnel, bookkeeper and salary settlement personnel are the most dangerous, ranking at the top of the list of lost jobs; Executive secretaries, assemblers, customer information and service related personnel are closely followed, and the supply is expected to exceed the demand; Accountants and auditors are also among the "high-risk" professions most likely to be replaced by machines.
In contrast, the demand for emerging technology positions such as data analyst, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning experts, it service personnel and relevant personnel engaged in application software analysis and work has surged, becoming a hot spot in the market; Business managers, sales and marketing experts and other positions of "sales" is also very good.
Looking at all industries, by 2022, the proportion of new jobs in the surveyed enterprises will increase from 16% to 27%, while the proportion of lost jobs will decrease from 31% to 21%.
At the same time, the demand for different positions varies in different regions of the world: in the future, financial and investment advisers will be very popular in East Asia and Western Europe; Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and South Asia are still in great need of assemblers and factory workers; The most popular occupation in North America is electrical engineer.
Under the wave of the fourth industrial revolution, how to grasp the opportunity of employment demand growth? In the future, all industries are expected to form a considerable skill gap, some abilities will become more and more important, and skill retraining is essential.
The report found that by 2022, nearly 54% of employees need effective skills retraining. Among them, about 35% of the employees should receive no less than six months of additional training, 9% need to be retrained for 6-12 months, and 10% need more than one year of training market. On average, everyone will need 101 days (nearly three months) of extra study time.
From the perspective of different industries, the aviation and tourism industries have the highest demand for skills retraining, and the business leaders in medical, chemical, advanced materials and biotechnology industries are most likely to retrain their employees' skills. In contrast, the transportation industry is the least likely to retrain existing employees.
However, it is worth noting that the employees who need to improve their skills most are the least likely to actually receive training. More than half of the enterprises interviewed said that in order to strengthen their strategic capabilities, priority will be given to training employees who can bring higher value to the company. Among them, 54% of enterprises plan to train key personnel in their employees, 53% plan to train front-line employees who will use relevant new technologies, and 41% plan to focus on high-performance employees.
At that time, the potential of analytical thinking, innovation ability and active learning will be most valued, and the importance of technical design and programming ability will also rise sharply. But at the same time, skills with "human" characteristics, such as originality, critical thinking, persuasion and negotiation, are still valuable. EQ, leadership and social influence are also indispensable and will increase significantly.
On the contrary, the market for hands-on ability, endurance, memory, financial management, technical maintenance and other needs will decline.
Saadia zahidi, director of the new economic and social center of the world economic forum, believes that in the era of machines, if enterprises want to maintain their vitality and competitiveness, they must invest in the development of human capital, so that automation and comprehensive strengthening strategies complement each other.
According to the report, about 50% of the companies surveyed expect automation to reduce the number of full-time employees by 2022, nearly 40% expect to expand their workforce, and more than a quarter expect automation to create new jobs in the enterprise.
In order to meet the challenges of the new employment situation, the enterprises interviewed mainly put forward three strategies: long-term employment of new employees who master new technology related skills; Complete automation of work tasks; Retraining existing staff. Many other companies are expected to allocate work to professional contractors, freelancers and casual workers.
The transformation of labor market brings not only challenges but also opportunities. New technologies can drive business growth, create jobs and demand for professional skills. But for some jobs that are suitable for automation, the status of human beings will be replaced by machines.
Whether it's employees or leaders, the skill gap can accelerate the trend of automation, but it may also hinder the adoption of new technologies, thereby affecting business growth.
The report concludes that policy makers, business managers and workers need to work together to grasp the pulse of the fourth industrial revolution.
For the government, we must deal with the impact of new technology on the labor market from many aspects, including upgrading the education system and improving the technology and soft skills of future workers; Social policies should be formulated to support the ecosystem of lifelong learners; Establishing social security network to manage the social impact of labor force transformation; Stimulate job creation, taking into account local and global demand for new jobs and skills.
As far as the industry is concerned, with the aggravation of the shortage of skilled talents in the next few years and the rise of labor costs, the existing workers should be supported to upgrade their skills to adapt to the new jobs with higher technical requirements, and the industry itself will also benefit from it. The industry also needs to consider how to expand the scope of these jobs to the casual, temporary and online workers they will rely more on.
For workers, they need to be responsible for the learning path in the current transformation process, and more adapt to the concept of lifelong learning.


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