COVID-19 is one of the biggest crisis of our time. It has impacted every single one of us and has disrupted every sector of the economy. The automation of work, combined with the global recession, has led workers to lose their jobs at an accelerated pace compared to previous years. And this trend --according to the Future of Jobs report from World Economic Forum (WEF) -- is expected to continue.

Faster than expected workforce automation would displace around 85 million jobs globally in medium and large businesses across 15 industries and 26 economies. That's the key highlight of the World Economic Forum report that has studied the impact of automation in workplaces. The report also highlighted that 97 million new roles may emerge that are more adapted to the new division of labour between humans, machines and algorithms.

Vesselina Stefanova Ratcheva, lead author of the report on the future of jobs said, "The first thing that we are seeing is the trend that we are being tracking for the past five years is still on pace and actually accelerating. The labour market is changing in response to businesses absorbing technologies. Over medium to long term these technologies are going to make our work better, but at the same time they are causing a structural shift in the jobs that are going to be available."

"This shift is a risk to workers who don’t have their adequate availability of training either through their employers or through government programs," he added.

For more, watch the video.

First Published:Oct 21, 2020 9:22 PM IST