By 2030, more than 30% of working hours could be automatized, according to a new report of the McKinsey Global Institute. Indeed, analysts from the cabinet estimated that depending on the speed at which new technologies are adopted, between 400 and 800 million people could lose their current jobs.

However the good news is that, out of this group of people, more than 375 million people, which is about 14% of the world’s workforce, could completely switch jobs and acquire new skills to evade unemployment.

Better even, McKinsey added that job demand will adjust to the evolution pace of artificial intelligence (AI). Technology will spur productivity and consequently revenues and consumption, in developing nations particularly. Meanwhile, there will be more jobs in the health sector to meet the demand of aging societies and more investment in infrastructures and energy.

Despite all, the report mentions a major element. Truly, according to the team of experts that wrote the document, for this macroeconomic adjustment to be really effective, major challenges are to be overcome. For example, everyone will need to acquire new skills. Governments and private companies will also need to implicate themselves as the pill might be quite a bitter one to swallow, according to the report.

“While there may be enough work to maintain full employment to 2030 under most scenarios, the transitions will be very challenging - matching or even exceeding the scale of shifts out of agriculture and manufacturing we have seen in the past”, the report warns.

Though automatization could end many jobs, most of them will be redesigned and there will be much more jobs than now.

800 million of people stripped of their jobs by automatization in no way means 800 million people without jobs, the cabinet highlighted.

Fiacre E. Kakpo