“What jobs will centenarians be doing at the end of the century?” asked the man from the BBC….
Rohit Talwar, a futurologist, had declared at last week’s Headmasters’ and Headmistresses' Conference that many of today's 10 or 11-year-olds will live to at least 120 and a sizeable proportion will keep working until they reach 100. But how might this work?
And thus started a somewhat bizarre conversation – for the man from the BBC appeared to have made the fundamental mistake highlighted by our co-Director George Leeson – that people often think that populations will change, but that everything else will stay the same. Justin Parkinson the BBC journalist proceeded to ask me if I could name a list of jobs which some of 100 might be able to do.
Firstly, if as forecast half the population of many OECD countries will make it to 100 by the end of the century – data from the Human Mortality Data base produces the age half the current birth cohorts will make – 107 for Japan, 104 for Canada and France, 103 for the UK - then it is highly probable that the mental and physical capacity of these centenarians will be considerably greater than their forebears today. As we push back life expectancy so we appear at present to be pushing back the onset of disability – so much so that the health status of a 70 year old European male is that of a 57 year old half a century ago.
However, while we can forecast with some degree of likelihood the demographics, we are far less certain of how the world of work will change – that’s the “everything else” bit. What jobs will there be at the end of 2100?
This is the more difficult bit - making predictions about technological progress is full of pitfalls, as witnessed by Minsky’s infamous 1970 declaration that “intelligent computers” would arrive during that decade. However some are beginning to argue that all human activity is under threat of computerisation, automation, and transference into the digital and virtual space.
Frey and Osbourne, colleagues at the OMS, for example, already convincingly argue that the digital age will transform the nature of work across industries. For example, up to 87% of jobs in Accommodation & Food Services are at risk of automation and up to half of jobs in the relatively skilled industries, such as Finance and Insurance. Some, however, are also arguing that not only will manufacturing jobs, and indeed white collar tasks such as article writing and data analysis, be replaced by advances in machine learning, but that advanced algorithms will threaten the majority of human tasks, including professional and creative work. Look for example, at IBM’s Watson computer, with the ability to scale - break down expertise into algorithms so that it can be learned by computers.
So the fundamental question is surely not “What jobs will centenarians being doing at the end of the century?” But “What jobs will anyone being doing at the end of the century?”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34465190
|
"We are entering a new era of longevity in terms of life expectancy. But it seems we're also entering a transformational time in terms of the way work happens," says Sarah Harper, Director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing. Harper predicts that most jobs as we know them will no longer exist when today's children reach 100. Robots will work alongside humans, making physically demanding tasks obsolete, while working patterns will be less regimented, instead fitting around lifestyles and family time. |
|
The number of people over the age of 90 was more than half a million last year, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). |
http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/news/2015_Citi_GPS_Technology_Work
About the Author:
Sarah Harper is Professor of Gerontology at the University of Oxford, Director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing and Senior Research Fellow at Nuffield College.
Opinions of the blogger is their own and not endorsed by the Institute
Comments Welcome: We welcome your comments on this or any of the Institute's blog posts. Please feel free to email comments to be posted on your behalf to administrator@ageing.ox.ac.uk or use the Disqus facility linked below.
