By Mohammad Aly Fikry
The emergence of globalisation and digitalisation has altered the labour market landscape between countries. Superfast development of information and communication technology (ICT) has even revolutionised employment. This revolution is gradually eliminating some jobs. Machines are replacing human workers. On the other hand, however, the demand for workers with ICT skills has increased significantly.
The latest research from Bank Indonesia provides evidence for this. Conducted by Deniey A. Purwanto et al. (2021) from the Faculty of Economics and Management, Bogor Agricultural University (IPB) and funded by the central bank under the Bank Indonesia Research Grant (RGBI), this research demonstrates how the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the job market fundamentally, significantly and rapidly.
World Bank data shows that unemployment has increased sharply since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic from 5.37% in 2019 to 6.47% in 2020, pushing unemployment to its highest rate in the past three decades.
Lockdown policy forced the public sector, private sector and households to adopt digitalisation quickly. Remote working or work from home along with the use of artificial intelligence (AI), robots and other modern technologies have increased the potential loss of manual labour through automation.
A post-pandemic shift in skill requirements is inevitable and unavoidable. Several job categories, however, still have a promising outlook and do not require any fundamental changes of skills. Such jobs are administrative, technical and managerial in nature, which can be performed remotely and are impacted less by declining individual income.
Notwithstanding, the number of hours worked by remote workers tends to be higher. Remote work can be performed anywhere and at any time. With technology, workers and their managers can connect and communicate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In the long term, this could reduce worker productivity, thus requiring appropriate policies to lower unemployment and maintain productivity.