Five job opportunities in 2019

The rhetoric in 2018 has been around jobless growth of the economy, the lack of job creation in traditional high growth sectors like banking, manufacturing and agriculture and a general feeling that many graduates of engineering, arts and commerce are destined for a long job hunt in 2019.

There is no doubt that the number of jobs being created in the wake of 7.5 per cent growth of the economy is significantly less than all of us would like to keep young Indians employed and productive. 

The unemployment rate had grown to 9.6 per cent in 2011 as compared to 6.8 per cent in 2001 as per Census 2011 data and while some reports have been optimistic about job creation in the semi-formal and entrepreneurial segments, the number of jobs being created in the organised sector is still just 6 per cent of the total jobs available in spite of the majority of education and training efforts aimed at preparing the youth for these jobs. 

And while accounting for over 94 per cent of workers, India’s unorganised sector created just 57 per cent of India’s national domestic product (2006) as it has low productivity and offers lower wages. There is no data to prove that the situation is much better today.

A few more data points: with increasing automation and robotics being introduced, the manufacturing sector currently is unable to provide significant opportunities and the agriculture sector, which employs 49 per cent of the population has seen very weak growth in the workforce over the years with rural families now forced to consider alternate avenues for sustainable livelihoods.  

A study conducted by PwC highlights that 53 per cent of the 10,000 people surveyed have highlighted the role technology breakthroughs will play in transforming the way people work over the next 5-10 years.

As a result of the impact of technological changes, people implications for organisations would vary based on their characteristics and size of operations. 

The PwC report speaks about three categories of organisations that would emerge — the large organisations, which would continue to grow bigger and bigger, the socially conscious organisations that would respond to key concerns such as sustainability, demographic dividend and digital divide and small organisations that would be built around specialised capabilities. 

Each of these types of organisations would call for different skills in individuals to adapt to changing business needs. 

What are the types of jobs that youth coming into the market in 2019 should expect and how can they be prepared for the demands that customers and employers will place on them?

Broadly one can categorise future jobs in five categories. 1) Management and strategy consulting, advisory services and audit jobs, which will continue to grow in line with the growth of GDP and will attract the cream of the crop from business schools and other professional training establishments. 2) IT and IT-enabled services jobs for both Indian and global organisations expanding their activities in India through in-house centres that support domestic as well as international clients. The jobs, however, will no longer be in the traditional areas of programming, application maintenance, testing, transaction processing and voice help desks as a lot of these activities will be taken over by artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. With increasing digitization in the economy and industry, employers will seek skills in user experience and user interface design, product and platform development for reaching out to digital clients, customer and organization behaviour and digital specialisations like AI, machine learning, advanced analytics, quantum computing, mixed reality and cybersecurity. 3) Cyber-physical expertise in manufacturing. This will need mechanical production and IT engineers trained on robotics and able to co-exist with robots on the manufacturing shop floor and robotic process automation in services. 4) Data sciences and analytics with applications in financial services, agriculture, healthcare and government and 5) Social and education entrepreneurs, capable of building NGOs, social enterprises and participating in the development of people in cities and towns for the challenges of the future.

All these will need some tweaks to education syllabus in academic institutions, which is always a long process. 

In the interim, there will be a need for specialist skills institutes and digital learning platforms to enable graduates and final year students to get prepared for the new world very similar to the scenario that prevailed in the 1990s when APTECH and NIIT stepped into the breech to enable youth in India and abroad to prepare for software engineering careers.

It will also be important for youth to get used to new ways of working away from the traditional granite and glass environments that have become aspirational for young folk in India over the years.  It would no longer be unfashionable to work from home or work for oneself and pursue any of the myriad opportunities built around one’s own expertise offered to the GIG economy. 

We would also see new federations and professional guilds emerging, which would certify the expertise and skills of professionals through online community ratings and rankings and thus establish new standards for performance. 

All individual performers — from plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics to small establishments as well as those with advanced academic qualifications — doctors, accountants, IT specialists and others would require to be digitally savvy and add the digital component to their profession — in their delivery of service, in marketing or in their product offerings. 

More reliance on oneself and a continuous process of re-skilling and up-skilling and taking responsibility for one’s own professional and career development is the imperative — the future will not be simple, but will certainly be exciting for the young graduating classes of 2019.

Author is Chairman, 5F World