A recent report focussing on automation and employability titled ‘Changing Business and Opportunities for Employer and Business Organisations’ released by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) reveals that 51.8 per cent of activities in India can be automated. It says that robotic automation is now taking the place of jobs that require low skills, involve highly structured physical work, and simple work of assembling.
In Japan, 55.7 per cent of activities can be automated whereas in Thailand the figure is 54.8 per cent. More than 40 per cent of activities across the world can be automated.
It is clear that routine jobs are more at risk of being automated that any others.
Interestingly, automation threatens to affect more women than men. This is because, automation is likely to affect the retail sector as well as the business process outsourcing and textiles, clothing and footwear sectors. And these are the sectors that employ the maximum number of women.
Automation is causing 66 per cent of Indian businesses to look for quite a different set of skills among new hires in 2019 as compared 2015. In fact, businesses the world over are on the lookout for different skills in new hires, and they are not really succeeding in finding skilled talent.
For 53% of Indian businesses it has become harder to recruit people with the required skills. This clearly means that India is facing an unemployment crisis. But most importantly, it is facing an employability crisis.
While companies do have jobs to offer, they are failing to find skilled Even when firms have jobs on offer, they are unable to find skilled people to perform them.
The education system is to blame majorly, as it is not equipped to change with the requirements of the modern workplaces. This has resulted in unemployability of the students who join the population of jobseekers every year.
