Spotlight 1: What effect are new technologies having on employment?
Updated: Jan 22, 2019
New technological advances are emerging in almost every field today, and doing so more rapidly than ever before. They are changing the way businesses operate, and as a result,
will impact the labour market. What affect the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution
(4IR) will have on employment have become a great cause for anxiety and concern.
The fear that new technologies will take away jobs that humans have traditionally performed
is not new. Each new technological innovation, especially in the productive industries,
has brought about a wave of anxiety that labour would be displaced, resulting in
‘technological unemployment’. But though new technologies have ‘killed off’ many old
industries and the jobs they provided, they have often replaced them with new ones that
offer just as many jobs...
