The automation of B.C.’s labour force won’t take the form of city buses being run by driverless programming or robotic limbs replacing kitchen staff.
At least not overnight.
But half of all Canadian jobs will be affected by automation over the next decade, according to a research paper released in March by RBC Economics.
Humans Wanted found that the four million young Canadians entering the workforce in the next 10 years are “unprepared” for sweeping changes to the workforce.
It will likely be a different story on the West Coast, however.
“Workers in British Columbia and Ontario face the lowest risk of disruption due to automation,” concluded a separate January study from the C.D. Howe Institute. “Those two provinces also face a relatively low polarization of risk in the distribution of employment and a smaller fraction of employment in occupations that are likely automatable.”
The Toronto-based think tank’s report Risk and Readiness: The Impact of Automation on Provincial Labour Markets examined the composition of each provincial labour market based on factors such as basic skills, education and the proportion of jobs susceptible to automation. Jobs most vulnerable to technological change are those heavy on calculations and light on subtle human interactions, such as bookkeeping or assembly-line work.
Report author Rosalie Wyonch found that provinces like B.C. that have a high level of economic diversification or a concentration of workers in areas not very susceptible to automation are better situated for change driven by technological advances such as artificial intelligence.
Ontario and Alberta also placed high on the list, while workers in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Saskatchewan are most at risk of losing their jobs or experiencing significant changes to their professions in the coming years.
But the advent of automation powered through artificial intelligence doesn’t necessarily spell doom for labour markets, according to consultant Eric Termuende, an expert on the future of work.
“The jury’s still out on what that means for job destruction and job creation,” said the co-founder of Now Innovations and author of Rethink Work.
Termuende, who is scheduled to deliver a keynote address to the Canadian Environmental and Engineering Executives Conference September 20, said the jobs most at risk from new technology are the ones focused on repeatable tasks. So accountants and other white-collar professionals in the financial sector will be forced to grapple with the same kinds of uncertainties faced by many workers with factory jobs.
Termuende believes more companies will soon be placing a greater emphasis on human interaction.
Not only will soft skills be highly valued assets, but also companies will place renewed emphasis on the value of physical offices, cooling a trend toward remote working, he said.
The RBC Economics report reached a similar conclusion, finding that skills requiring critical thinking, co-ordination, social perceptiveness, active listening and complex problem solving will be most in demand in the coming years.
“We should emphasize that the skills above will be in demand across all occupations – including STEM [science, technology, engineering and math] and trades occupations, whose reputations play down the demand for social skills,” the report said.
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