Transformation

Analysis of current state

1. 
   Digital transformation
   

Automation as a part of digital transformation of businesses is a critical and one of the most important issue which will be affecting the labor market in the near future (Goos 2018). As we can see in the figure 1 and according to the OECD publication „Job Creation and Local Economic Development“ (2018) at the beginning of the century, 100 000 industrial robots were delivered to the businesses each year across the world. By the 2016 this number has reached 300 000 annually.

Figure 1. Worldwide annual supply of robots in OECD countries [1]

Based upon this, the aggregate pattern is reflected in an increase in the use of robots in several OECD countries. Many economic models predict that increasing digitalization and a growing use of industrial robots will lead to higher labor productivity growth. Some workers will benefit from new technology that makes their jobs more pleasant and

leads to rising wages. Others workers will struggle to adapt to the new environment and will face job losses. This means that the importance of some jobs will decline and gradually such job positions will disappear and, on the contrary the importance of some jobs will increase significantly.

2. 
   Digital transformation of labor market
   

According to several authors (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2014; Harmon and Silberman 2018, Rifkin 2014), the current technological change offers some radical new opportunities that can lead to significant transformations not only in the way of producing and doing business but also in the overall economic system.

Study of World Economic Forum “Future of Jobs” (2018) points out that by the year 2022, 38 % of businesses worldwide expect to extend their workforce to new productivity-enhancing roles, and more than a quarter expect automation to lead to creation of new roles in their enterprise. Business are set to expand their use of contractors doing task-specialized work and also intend to engage workers in a more flexible manner, utilizing remote staffing beyond physical offices and decentralization of operations. In overall study points out that there will be a significant shift in the quality, location, format and permanency of new roles.
Study further adds that among the range of roles that are set to experience increasing demand in the period up to 2022 are established roles such as data analysts and scientists, software and applications developers, and ecommerce and social media specialists that are significantly based on and enhanced by the use of technology (Corejova, Al Kassiri 2016). Also expected to grow are roles that leverage distinctively human skills – for example customer service workers, sales and marketing professionals, professionals in the field of training and development, organizational development specialists and innovation managers. An increased demand is expected for a variety of new specialist roles related to the new emerging technologies. Such roles are AI and machine learning specialists, big data specialists, process automation experts, information security analysts, user experience and human-machine interaction designers, robotics engineers and blockchain specialists. Across the industries surveyed in the study, jobs expected to become increasingly redundant over the 2018-2022 period are routine-based, middle-skilled white collar roles – such as data entry clerks, accounting and payroll clerk’s secretaries, auditors, bank tellers and cashiers. In overall these jobs – are more susceptible to advances in new technologies and process automation. These shifts reflect unfolding and accelerating trends that have evolved over a number of recent years (Corejova, Al Kassiri 2015).
On a global scale, the issue of job automation is dealt with in the publication „Job Creation and Local Economic Development“(2018) from OECD. Most recent findings of the OECD from the year 2013 in the context of percentage of jobs at high and significant risk of automation are stated in figure 2.
Figure 2. Share of jobs at risk of automation by the countries of OECD [1]

By the high risk of automation we can understand the share of workers whose jobs face a risk of automation of 70 % or above. Significant risk of change reflects the share of workers whose jobs have a 50-70 % chance of being

automated. Based upon the findings of the OECD, we can conclude that the share of jobs at high risk of automation varies strongly across countries. The percentage of jobs at high risk of automation varies from 5,7 % in Norway to 33,7 % in Slovakia. More generally, Northern Europe (Scandinavian countries and United Kingdom), North America (Canada and United States) and New Zealand face relatively low levels of risk. At the other end countries of Eastern and Southern Europe face much higher risk of automation.

Publication further adds that these differences are not due to sectoral differences in the respective economies. Rather, they are due to the different organization of jobs in those countries. Jobs in Southern and Eastern Europe are more likely to have automatable aspects than jobs of the same job family in the other countries. For example, workers on an assembly line might only do a manual task that is at high risk of automation in one country. In another country, workers in the same occupation might also monitor an industrial robot and take care of quality control measures. In this case, jobs in the occupation in the second country are at much lower risk than in the first country.

3.