Two Billion Jobs to Dissapear By 2030 - Futurist Thomas Frey

Thomas Frey, author of Communicating with the Future speaking at TEDxReset in Istanbul predicts that over two billion jobs will disappear by 2030.  

Thomas Frey is Google's top rated futurist speaker. As the Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute, he develops original research studies that enable him to speak on uncommon topics. He founded the Institute after fifteen years at IBM, where he was honored with over 270 awards. He has been denoted the "Father of Invention" because his work has inspired numerous inventors and other revolutionary thinkers.

The idea of 2 billion jobs disappearing (roughly 50% of all the jobs on the planet) wasn’t intended by Frey as a doom and gloom outlook. Rather, it was intended as a wakeup call, letting the world know how quickly things are about to change, and letting academia know that much of the battle ahead will be taking place at their doorstep.

Here is a brief overview of five industries – where Frey says the jobs will be going away and the jobs that will likely replace at least some of them – over the coming decades.

1.) Power Industry

Jobs Going Away

• Power generation plants will begin to close down.
• Coal plants will begin to close down.
• Many railroad and transportation workers will no longer be needed.
• Even wind farms, natural gas, and bio-fuel generators will begin to close down.
• Ethanol plants will be phased out or re-purposed.
• Utility company engineers, gone.
• Line repairmen, gone.

New Jobs Created

• Manufacturing power generation units the size of ac units will go into full production.
• Installation crews will begin to work around the clock.
• The entire national grid will need to be taken down (a 20 year project). Much of it will be recycled and the recycling process alone will employ many thousands of people.
• Micro-grid operations will open in every community requiring a new breed of engineers, managers, and regulators.
• Many more.

2.) Automobile Transportation – Going Driverless

Jobs Going Away

• Taxi and limo drivers, gone.
• Bus drivers, gone.
• Truck drivers, gone.
• Gas stations, parking lots, traffic cops, traffic courts, gone.
• Fewer doctors and nurses will be needed to treat injuries.
• Pizza (and other food) delivery drivers, gone.
• Mail delivery drivers, gone.
• FedEx and UPS delivery jobs, gone.
• As people shift from owning their own vehicles to a transportation-on-demand system, the total number of vehicles manufactured will also begin to decline.

New Jobs Created

• Delivery dispatchers
• Traffic monitoring systems, although automated, will require a management team.
• Automated traffic designers, architects, and engineers
• Driverless “ride experience” people.
• Driverless operating system engineers.
• Emergency crews for when things go wrong.

3.) Education

Jobs Going Away

• Teachers.
• Trainers.
• Professors.

New Jobs Created

• Coaches.
• Course designers.
• Learning camps.

4.) 3D Printers

Jobs Going Away

• If we can print our own clothes and they fit perfectly, clothing manufacturers and clothing retailers will quickly go away.
• Similarly, if we can print our own shoes, shoe manufacturers and shoe retailers will cease to be relevant.
• If we can print construction material, the lumber, rock, drywall, shingle, concrete, and various other construction industries will go away.

New Jobs Created

• 3D printer design, engineering, and manufacturing.
• 3D printer repairmen will be in big demand.
• Product designers, stylists, and engineers for 3D printers.
• 3D printer ‘Ink’ sellers.

5.) Robots

Jobs Going Away

• Fishing bots will replace fishermen.
• Mining bots will replace miners.
• Ag bots will replace farmers.
• Inspection bots will replace human inspectors.
• Warrior drones will replace soldiers.
• Robots can pick up building material coming out of the 3D printer and begin building a house with it.

New Jobs Created

• Robot designers, engineers, repairmen.
• Robot dispatchers.
• Robot therapists.
• Robot trainers.
• Robot fashion designers.

According to Frey, we are not well-equipped culturally and emotionally to have this much technology entering into our lives. There will be backlashes, “destroy the robots” or “damn the driverless car” campaigns with proposed legislation attempting to limit its influence.

At the same time, most of the jobs getting displaced are the low-level, low-skilled labor positions. Our challenge will be to upgrade our workforce to match the labor demand of the coming era. Although it won’t be an easy road ahead it will be one filled with amazing technology and huge potentials as the industries shift.

This analysis meshes well with Brynjolfsson and McAfee's Race Against The Machine, and helps to provide details on where the specific areas will be affected by exponentially progressing digital technologies.

Frey's TEDxReset talk video has not been distributed yet, but once it is we will repost it.  In the meantime, enjoy this talk by Frey on the future:

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