Technology’s influence on jobs and economic design

As the competent amongst us await their share of the promised two million jobs, government must make itself wary to a prospective analysis of job creation.
Government must follow a structured planning method of occupational evaluation, cognizant that uncertainties in global economy have varying effects on the value contribution and output potential of occupations.

A prospective analysis of respective occupations serves to enable Government to accurately forecast which jobs will remain valuable in future and what level of contribution they will add to our national output over time.

This is no easy task. Job creation is much more difficult than conventional discourse portrays, and it requires detailed analysis of as many possible work tasks involved in multiple sectors in the economy.

For instance, in manufacturing, a global labour intensity benchmark must be traced in order for a Government to have an idea of how many labour jobs it can create whilst challenging for productivity competitiveness.

In the last 15 years, labour intensity of manufacturing a dollar of output amongst developed economies now costs 11 cents less.
In this same period, manufacturing nominal output shot up more than 54 percent.

This means that productivity output is significantly increasing at the same time manufacturing processes are finding capital intensive alternatives to labour.

For developing economies, only a few decades ago it was believed to be advantageous to have inexpensive, low-skilled labour as a key ingredient to manufacturing industrialization.

Granted it worked in East Asia, it was a timely strategy not to be replicated today.
Evidently, modern capital intensive alternatives have erased that low cost advantage through enhanced productivity output.

Government must then ask itself: what are the implications for Zimbabwe in considering job creation in the manufacturing sector?
Labour neither serves as a low cost advantage nor does it compete in terms of output.

Thus, for astute Government, job creation in the manufacturing sector cannot be leveraged on labour intensity.
Similar trends are occurring in the services sector.

According to a Citigroup report released last week, roughly 60 to 70 percent of retail banking employees are currently doing manual processing driven jobs.

With the increased use of financial technology, all these current manual processing jobs can be replaced by automation within the next decade.

We can predict this in Zimbabwe as well.
The central bank is encouraging a shift to mobile platforms and increased use of plastic money. It follows that financial services will see a decrease in the value contribution of manual jobs. Particular attention must be focused on the agrarian economy.

It is estimated that over 70 percent of our workforce is involved in agriculture. As we push for greater productivity and efficiency in agri-business, value chains will become leaner and frugal. The utility of labour will be scrutinized and inevitably transferred to capital intensive means of production.

All these trends show that in future, work is to be inherited off technological platforms. Therefore, Government must assess whether our economy’s technology infrastructure is conducive for greater employment.

We cannot talk about creating two million jobs without initially creating the technology infrastructure to assimilate two million workers.

As such, an astute question would be to ask, does our economy have adequate capacity of technology infrastructure?
This informs my rather skeptical assessment of having a STEM policy. It is not that our economy does not produce enough STEM professionals, we do and they leave the country.

The challenge for Zimbabwe is that we do not have adequate capacity of technology infrastructure to hire more STEM workers!
For example, there is a need for biochemistry in agriculture and our food processing industries. Our universities already produce these professionals.

However, there are not enough research labs to employ more biochemists within our economy. Our STEM pains are an effect of a deficit in technology infrastructure, not worker availability. We must enhance are metrics within technology infrastructure such as increased mobile penetration, broadband access and technical facilities!

What seems apparent is that when government conducts a prospective analysis of job creation, technology infrastructure is fundamental.

Technology infrastructure dictates how work is to be done and how enterprises perceive the value contribution of workers.
Another significant aspect of Government’s prospective analysis must be the inevitable changes to economic design as job creation is led by technology infrastructure.

For instance, hopefully as our economic culture matures, we will create a basic income for all citizens – of course that cannot precede fixing our currently structural deficiencies.

Consider that while we have a deficit of technology infrastructure to assimilate already skilled workers into work processes, we still have a significant proportion of our population under skilled to fit into that technology infrastructure.

Sure, we are churning out thousands of graduates every year.
But we are having higher numbers of drop-outs who neither access higher education nor vocational training.

Just consider that average O’Level pass rates for the past decade have been below 40 percent. This means that while we can increase capacity of technology infrastructure to assimilate our skilled workforce, a large population on the other end will still not qualify for work.

They will not fit into manufacturing, banking, or agriculture assuming our economy operates at a competitively high level of capital intensity.

They will require a basic income. Technology infrastructure increases competitiveness and high level employment, but it completely erases low level jobs.

Government must seek to understand technology’s influence on jobs and economic design.
It is inconceivable to create as many as two million jobs without carrying out an in depth analysis of the necessary technology infrastructure to assimilate those jobs.

Moreover, our economic design must be one that can sustain the inevitable realities technology will bring.