World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

The McKinsey Global Institute has released a new report entitled “How will automation affect economies around the world?”  It is a transcript of a podcast, so one can read or listen to it.  There are three interviews, one on China, one on Europe, and one on India.  Overall, the report is consistent with how automation will be accompanied by job displacement, but there are some very creative and interesting ideas on how to address job losses and adding new skills to the current workforce.  For example, one possibility is to integrate job training into current jobs:

“Why not make sure that instead of working so many hours a week, ensure a portion of it—2 percent, 3 percent, 5 percent of that—is actually devoted for new learnings. And these learnings, if you do them right, will give you the rights basically to get points for your pension in the future. In this concept, instead of adjusting the number of hours to work, because there will likely be a bit less work in the future, you will still work. But you work for the future. Firms have an incentive to possibly even co-finance because firms are not bad guys. They’re not there to take people out. They want people that are good at doing their job and complementary with capital. And for them, they need these skills, and these skills come from job trainings most of the time.”

The description of the Chinese response to automation is particularly interesting given the large population and the rate of economic change in China.  The Chinese seem to have thought long and hard about how to deal with unemployed workers.  McKinsey also has a report entitled “What can history teach us about technology and jobs?” and one entitled “How do we create meaningful work in an age of automation?”