BERLIN, Sept. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB) has urged German policymakers and businesses on Monday to ramp up investments to equip the national labor force with the skills needed in an increasingly digitalized workplace.
"The consequences (of digitalization) will only be accepted by people, be they workers or consumers, if the technology in question serves them rather than vice-versa", DGB president Reiner Hoffmann told the newspaper "WELT". As a consequence, it was urgently necessary for "much more to be invested" in the training and retraining of staff in Germany with view to innovations such as artificial intelligence, automation and Big Data.
Hoffmann's appeal was made in response to a study published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) which found that only 46 percent of German employees are prepared for the digital workplace. Nearly every third staff member in the country would have undergo further training for more than three months in order to eliminate a knowledge and skill gap identified by the WEF.
"Without an active education strategy, entire sectors of the economy and the people employed there will lose out in the fourth industrial revolution", Saadia Zahidi, WEF head of Social and Economic Agendas, warned. The fourth industrial revolution is sometimes used as a term to refer to the process of digitalization whereby information can increasingly be stored and processed in digital as opposed to analogue formats.
The WEF study predicts that machines will already account for a higher share of total labor hours than humans as soon as 2025. The figure would represent a near doubling of the relative contribution which robotic technology makes in the global economy compared to a current share of total labor hours of 29 percent.
The development of machines and algorithms directing automated processes is hereby believed to result in the elimination of 75 million, largely-repetitive and low-skill office jobs. At the same time, however, the WEF expressed confidence that these losses would be more than offset by the creation of 133 million new forms of work enabled by digital technologies.
The forecast is therefore more upbeat than those of some other think-tank and research institutes, like the German digital association (Bitkom), which have cautioned policymakers against the social ramifications of anticipated net job losses. The WEF study authors justified their optimism with recent data on new fast-growing industries and types of jobs which had emerged as a direct or indirect product of digitalization.
"Businesses understand the possibilities which new technologies offer them much better today", the study authors wrote.
Positions which were particularly in demand in the fourth industrial revolution included those of data analysts, software engineers, as well as e-Commerce and social-media specialists. Additionally, the WEF highlighted that prospects of workers who rely on human and social skills which cannot be emulated by machines, including creative and marketing functions, could expect an improvement of their employment prospects.
While it remains unclear whether such job gains can ultimately compensate for current employment lost to automation, there is little doubt that these roles are better paid on average and more flexible than the "old economy" activities which are at risk from digitalization.
The WEF noted that companies were already increasingly turning to freelancers to meet their demand for digital skills, a development which required a response by policymakers with view to labor regulations and pensions systems which pre-dated ongoing technological change.
