As the global population is rising, the demand for products and services is also increasing. Especially in fast growing economies, like China. For example, the demand for clothing is expected to rise due to the migration into the middle class and they are starting to see their clothing as an expression of themselves (Keller et al, 2014). 75% of sales in the luxury goods segment will come from Chinese customers by 2020 (Keller et al, 2014).
This example is just to give you an idea of how much we need to start producing to keep up with the rising demand. In the past years machines have been taking over jobs in all kinds of industries. Automation and robotics took over jobs in production lines, chatbots started to do the work of customer service employees and 3d printing started to take over the assembly lines. Ofcourse these innovations help greatly in terms of speed, efficiency and accuracy. Furthermore they also create jobs in different sectors like IT, but according to Rotman (2013), these technologies are destroying jobs faster than creating them, which contributes to inequality and stagnating growth in the median income.
This can be illustrated in the following graph, displaying productivity and employment. the lines have been closely together in the years between the second world war and 2000, afterwards the gap has been becoming larger by the year, this is also called ‘The great decoupling’ (Rotman, 2013).
Jack Ma, Alibaba’s CEO also said in a video that people should be taught things that differentiate us from machines, like music, sports and art. This to make sure that humans remain different from machines and are irreplaceable by any machine. This is because in the past 200 years, humanity has been learning things that are knowledge based, instead of the soft parts mentioned by Jack Ma. We simply cannot teach our kids to compete with machines, because they are smarter, every time.
Sources:
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/515926/how-technology-is-destroying-jobs/
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/succeeding-in-tomorrows-global-fashion-market