Exec Summary

I begin this topic with some assumption that Emerging technology has a great impact on working force. Specifically, it will be a very helpful topic to both me and my classmate regarding career choice and keeping competitive in the future. Also, there is a pure curiosity about what's happening in the world, is it becoming better or worse.

With the help of system mapping, I am more clear about what my previous research and other classmates' research could lie on the big picture of the job market. I divide the system into two part: the supply and the demand.

Demand-side:

G1, G2, G3, G5 demonstrate how demand changed in different industries.

Farmers:

We see there is a decrease in employment as a farmer. There are two possible reasons for this decrease: firstly, assistant technologies in agriculture allow fewer people to take care of a big area of land. Second, the immigration from the rural area to cities, as you can see in FT graphic about what's happening in China. However, in other graph shows farmer still the biggest group in China for there are very diverse jobs in urban while there is not much job choice for people living in rural area.

Transportations:

Transportation is a very interesting industry to look at for me. There are two facts: the rise of track driver in the U.S. and the decrease of transportation in Germany. It begins to understandable to relate transportation with good distribution. I will try to look at how American consumer behaviour change in last 20 years for I think over-consumption could also be an important reason for that.

It is very surprising for me to see that employment in transportation declined in Germany. With quick research, I found that Germans ride 5 times more mass transit than Americans as the impact of Germany’s sustainable transport policy. But is it the reason for the employment decrease in transportation? How it contributes to it? Is it the trend that is happening or will happen in other countries? How self-driving technology will influence it? It requires more research to answer these questions.

G4, G7, G8 shows how the demand for skills shifts.

From G8, we can see most of the routine work are facing the threat of being replaced by AI ( Predictable physical work, Processing data, Data collection) while people skill ( Managing others, Stakeholder interactions); problem-solving (unpredictable physical work) and applying expertise will not influence by AI.

This trend also demonstrates in ATM and Subway/Airplane Ticket Machine cases. When the machine took over most of the routine task and give more space for people to focus on more complex tasks like problem solving and interaction. Also, because the machine allowed banks/subways & aeroplane companies to operate branches at lower cost; this prompted them to open many more branches, offsetting the erstwhile loss.

Supply Side:

It is until I made the map today that I realized that I overlook the research on the supply side. Only G6 China’s great rural migration shows the increase of working force scale in urban areas. So today, I did some quick research and found that the number of college graduates is increasing every year. Besides that, I think the supply is closely related to Jiyao's research on Global Migration; Kai's research on personal meaning and M.H.'s research on Gender Roles.