This is a post from News.com.au
The Australian job market is predicted to dramatically shift over the next few years as we adapt to a changing workforce heavily reliant on technology and digital transformation.
Job numbers in Australia are expected to shrink 11 per cent by 2030, costing 1.5 million jobs over the next few years, as the rise of artificial intelligence and automation transforms the global workforce, a recent report reveals.
The report by research firm Forrester, which looks at the future of jobs post-2020, analysed 391 occupations tracked by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Bookkeepers, accountants, human resources staff and office clerks who perform structured administrative tasks are most at risk, with automation likely to eliminate a million of those jobs first. The research predicts more than half of jobs in this category will be gone by 2030 as the tasks move over to automated systems.
Co-ordinators in middle management roles will also start to decline, whereas the need for people leaders to act as communicators and facilitators of organisational change will remain.
While some jobs will be lost, new ones will also be created – predicted to be around 1.7 million by 2030 – while as many as one in three workers will transform into the online gig economy.
The next few years will see an increased demand for workers with more advanced digital skills, including technical specialists with skills in big data, process automation, robotics engineering, blockchain and machine learning, which will offset the more traditional technology roles that can be fully automated.
The number of roles for specialists deemed “digital elites”, such as data scientists and software and app developers, are expected to grow by 25 per cent.
Australians working for charities, social enterprises and health and wellbeing services will become a significant new labour force, with more than 700,000 jobs in this sector growing as workers seek to align personal values and lifestyles with work.
Knowledge diversity will keep a quarter of Australian workers safe due to the diverse skills their jobs require. So-called “cross-domain knowledge workers” who bring in expertise from across different areas will be in need. “Some of the biggest challenges that firms face in embracing automation technologies relate to culture and change management,” Forrester principal analyst Sam Higgins said.
“It’s critical that policymakers and employers learn how to minimise the number of digital outcasts by measuring the ability of individuals and organisations to adapt to, collaborate with, trust, and generate business results from automation – or else over 1 million Australian workers may be left stranded beyond the next digital divide.”
According to another recent study, from Amazon Web Services, there will be the need for an extra 6.5 million digital workers in Australia in the next four years to keep up with changing technologies.
The number of skilled technology workers will need to increase almost 80 per cent by 2025 to keep up with demand and the average worker will need to gain several new digital skills to keep pace, according to the study.