The whole digitalization and jobs thing...

Yesterday I attended a seminar organized by KTH on how digitalization affects the labor market. It was a three-hour event with a bunch of reputable participants and speakers. Among other things, Anna Breman from Swedbank talked about the three major megatrends that are going on right now; Globalization, Urbanization, Digitization. We see the results of all three already now; physical goods become digital services, digital platforms lead to the elimination of intermediaries, and automation and robotization make traditional industry more efficient. Of course, all this affects the labor market. It will not continue to look like it does today.

Carl Benedikt Frey and fellow researcher Michael Osbourne have conducted a study of the US labour market that shows which jobs are most at risk of being fully or partially automated as a result of increased digitization. The study, which has received widespread international attention, shows that 47% of American jobs are threatened by digitization. The threat does not mean that all these jobs will disappear, but that important elements of what are currently human tasks will to some extent be taken over by robots or software.

The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF), together with Stefan Fölster, has "translated" Frey and Osborne's study into Swedish terms. Their results indicate that 53% of Swedish jobs may be affected by increased digitalization.

But, Fölster also draws another very important conclusion: that automation also indirectly leads to many new jobs. For example, thanks to smart computers, many companies can produce and manage an ever-increasing range of products and services to be sold, distributed and maintained. This increases the demand for many different kinds of jobs, from salespeople in specialized shops to repairmen, and probably completely new professions that we don't even know about today.

The same point was made by former finance minister Anders Borg, when he spoke about how growth and productivity are created and affected in a digitized world during a seminar organized by Google a few weeks ago. Borg mentioned on several occasions how he himself had previously always talked about how digitization contributes to the disappearance of jobs, i.e. job destruction, but that he now (late will the sinner wake up...) has gained insight into the fact that new jobs are also created (job creation) with the progress of digitization.

So, the problem is not really that new jobs are not created when old ones disappear. Rather, it is that we are too slow to adapt. Which is perhaps partly a question of our general (negative) attitude to change, but even more a question of training and skills development.

To start with, we need to understand that today and in the future we will never be fully trained or developed, as well as that digitalization is not something that will "end" but is a constant process of renewal and innovation. Continuous skills development throughout our working lives will be required of us all. Employers obviously have some responsibility for this, but we will also inevitably need to take more individual responsibility for our development than we have done so far.

To do so, we need a school that is in step with the world around us and can prepare to meet the demands - and seize the opportunities - of an increasingly digitized existence. The government must therefore initiate a nationally coordinated action programme for the digitization of schools, with an emphasis on pedagogy. Programming and digital creation should be mandatory in the curriculum and resources for teacher training should be provided. And this must happen now.

Our report on skills needs in the sector, released before Easter, found that - if no action is taken - there will be a shortfall of 60,000 people in the IT sector alone by 2020. A need that is largely based on the digitalization trend. 60,000 NEW jobs. "Job creation", to quote Anders Borg.