The Three Laws of Future Employment
That's the title of a recent article by Daniel Jelski, a chemistry professor. His three laws of employment:
- People will get jobs doing things that computers can’t do.
- A global market place will result in lower pay and fewer opportunities for many careers. (But also in cheaper and better products and a higher standard of living for American consumers.)
- Professional people will more likely be freelancers and less likely to have a steady job.
Overall I'm inclined to agree with quite a few of his ideas, although #3 is the one that I'm currently most skeptical of (at least when it comes to computer science - a lot of that has already been outsourced). He does seem to be right that a lot of jobs with the same title as a few decades back are now significantly different in terms of day-to-day tasks - e.g. his example of electrical engineering. Similarly, and particularly for computer science, as he notes a lot of the future job market is likely to be global.
What does that mean for the future of science and engineering?
Laws #1 & 2 predict that there will likely be fewer STEM jobs in the future – they are both easily computerized and tradable. People will always be employed in STEM disciplines, many of them highly paid, but they’ll be paid for smarts rather than education.
... So if computerized, tradable skills won’t create much new employment, if any, what will? Clearly, it will be non-tradable skills that can’t be computerized. At their most valuable these jobs depend on human-human interaction - empathy.
Basically he sees a stronger need for the ability to deal with humans. That's something that the typical scientist doesn't quite seem to excel at - at least not to those outside his/her field.
Maybe having done a science honours program with an extended minor in the humanities wasn't such a bad thing. (Although I occasionally wish I'd taken more Math and Statistics given the direction my research has taken me).