Naveen Menon, President of Cisco for Southeast Asia speaks at the session (Photo: VNA) Hanoi (VNA) – With its recent increase in adoption rate, innovations inartificial intelligence (AI) technology are looking to have a big impact on theworkforce across the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) over thenext few decades, according to a new study by Cisco and Oxford Economics.
Titled“Technology and the Future of ASEAN Jobs”, the study highlights thatinnovations in digital technology will present big opportunities to ASEANeconomies to boost their productivity and prosperity. The more widespreadadoption of existing technologies, coupled with advances in the use of AIthrough software, hardware, and robotics, will help bring down costs of goodsand services, driving up demand and creating millions of new jobs.
Thestudy, which publicised by Cisco on September 12 within the framework of theWorld Economic Forum on ASEAN (WEF ASEAN) 2018, predicts that the sectors thatwill see the greatest rise in demand for new workers are wholesale and retail(1.8 million new jobs), manufacturing (0.9 million), construction (0.9million), and transport (0.7 million).
However,there will be a marked shift in the region’s labour market as lower-skilledjobs are displaced. According to the study, given the productivity gains from theadoption of AI-enabled technologies, ASEAN’s six largest economies will require28 million fewer workers by 2028 – more than 10 percent of the currentworkforce – to achieve the same level of output as today.
Lower-skilledworkers in the service and agriculture sectors will be the most susceptible todisplacement, especially as new developments – for example, in globalpositioning systems, telematics, and smart sensors – are deployed to greatereffect.
From anational perspective, jobs restructured vis-à-vis total workforce will beparticularly high in the most technologically advanced economies. Singaporecould see the biggest relative impact, with up to 21 percent of its workforcebeing affected. The country’s strong environment for cutting edge digitaltransformation allows businesses to take advantage of new innovations as theybecome available. Vietnam and Thailand are next in line, with 14 percent and 12percent of jobs replaced, respectively. In these countries, a lot of lessproductive, more monotonous jobs are projected to be eliminated, leavingVietnamese and Thai workers free to pursue jobs in more fulfilling andproductive sectors.
Despitethe equally large numbers of jobs displaced in Indonesia, Malaysia, and thePhilippines, the impact there will be smaller as a relative share of the totalworkforce. The structure of the labour markets in those countries, coupled withthe abundance of affordable labour, may also make the widespread adoption of AItechnology uneconomic for some time to come.
Thestudy predicts that, over a 10-year period, the competing effects of jobdisplacement and creation will offset each other. However, many of these newjobs are likely to be created in areas that are different from those where theyare being displaced. As such, as many as 6.6 million workers across the bloc’ssix largest economies will have to adapt their skills and forge a new careerpath to remain productively employed in this evolving labour market.
The studyreveals that 41 percent of those in displaced jobs are “acutely lacking” the ITskills that new jobs will be demanding. Almost 30 percent lack “interactiveskills” that will be needed for future job openings, such as negotiation,persuasion, and customer service skills. Just over 25 percent also lack“foundational skills”, like active learning, reading, and writing skillscrucial for the growth of ASEAN’s labour market.
NaveenMenon, President for Southeast Asia at Cisco, said “ASEAN has done incrediblywell in the last 10 years. The availability of a large workforce, coupled withbusinesses and consumers pushing the boundaries in adopting new technologies,has turned the region into one of the world’s fastest growing economic blocs.As economies look to sustain this growth and evolve to cater for newcompetencies, it is crucial to ensure that the region’s workforce is not leftbehind.”
“Thiswill require all stakeholders – businesses, governments, and educators – towork together to ensure the region’s current and future workforce are pickingup skills that go beyond just technical knowledge. They need skills likeproblem solving, design and critical thinking, leadership, collaboration,conflict resolution, and empathy. In the digital future, where everyone willhave access to the same data and information, these skills will be the keydifferentiator between being employable or not,” he added.
Thereport suggests a range of training approaches, including greater commitment toon-the-job training, more flexible online courses, and work experience schemesto complement or even, in some cases, substitute for a formal school andtertiary education in some cases, to ensure the region’s workforce can acquirethe skills needed over the next decades.–VNA
