The Business Council of Australia’s (BCA) national president, Catherine Livingstone, gave a speech yesterday to the National Press Club, in which she warned that many of the jobs around today will not exist in the future as robots and computers take over, and urges policy makers to boost skills in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) related fields. From The ABC’s Michael Janda:
“If 47 per cent of total US employment is at risk of being automated using artificial intelligence, we need to move urgently from a discussion about protecting the jobs of today, to creating the jobs of the future,” she argued.
With 400,000 young Australians neither in study or work, and unemployment overall currently above 6 per cent, Ms Livingstone said the nation does not so much have a participation problem as a failure to match skills and training with current and future employment demand.
“Precision welders and robotics mechanics will be more useful in the growing advanced manufacturing sector than yet more law graduates for whom there are no jobs,” she added…
In addition, Ms Livingstone said that there needs to be greater emphasis on science, technology and maths education, given the likely jobs of the future.
She argued that computer coding, computational thinking, problem solving and design thinking must be taught alongside more traditional subjects.
“As it stands in Australia, however, the gap between the digital literacy of our young people and that of our competitor nations is increasing,” Ms Livingstone warned.
“If we want increased productivity and participation, we need urgently to embark on a ten-year plan to close that gap.
“This will be essential to tackling structural youth unemployment.”
Ms Livingston’s comments raise some pertinent issues.
First, if the nation has no shortage of workers – a view backed-up by the Department of Employment’s skilled labour report – then why is the Government persisting with its loosening of foreign worker visas?
And why does Australia have some 200,000 so-called skilled 457 visa workers residing in Australia amid the high labour underutilisation (see below table)?
Particularly when the majority of 457 visas have been granted to professions that many would not consider to be particularly “skilled”, in short supply, or critical to the economy, such as cooks/chefs, cafe/restaurant staff, call centre/customer service staff, and accountants (see next table).
Based on the above tables, which come from the Government’s so-called “independent report” on the 457 visa system, and the fact that there is already a large pool of under/unemployed Australians, it would appear that the foreign worker visa system is not genuinely designed to alleviate skills shortages at all, but rather is aimed at reducing the need for businesses to train local workers, while at the same time maintaining the throttle on population growth.
The other pertinent issue that Livingston raises is the need for Australia to boost its skills in STEM areas.
Why she is correct on this point, the problem is that the Abbott Government has worked actively against this goal.
First, the Coalition attempted to reform university fees and funding in a manner that would likely have made participation in STEM-related fields even worse, with the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM) estimating that science students could have experienced a doubling of fee repayments to around $90,000 or more (see below tables).
Thankfully, Labor, the Greens, and enough of the cross-benchers blocked these measures.
Second, the Abbott Government slashed funding to the CSIRO, which caused one in every five jobs to disappear at the organisation, with 1,400 science job losses announced in November alone:
Science communicator Julian Cribb told ABC Radio yesterday the cuts were “lobotomising” Australia.
“We are damaging the machine that produces the knowledge that going to keep this country competitive and efficient in the future,” he said…
“We really are shooting ourselves, not in the foot, but in the head,” Mr Cribb said. “And it’s not just in CSIRO, it’s across the board in science at the moment.
Rather than follow the BCA’s advice, it would appear that the Abbott Government would prefer that Australia is dumbed-down, remains uncompetitive, and has deep structural unemployment as local jobs are given away to foreigners working in areas not critical to the nation’s success.
Fancy another cappuccino anyone?
