Lisbon, Oct. 21, 2024 (Lusa) - Around 1.3 million jobs will have to be retrained in Portugal with the rapid adoption of automation and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), according to a McKinsey study released on Monday.
"There are 1.3 million jobs where people are going to have to do things differently," explains Duarte Begonha, a partner at McKinsey & Company, arguing that there needs to be a “very clear and defined agenda, involving the different stakeholders in society - the private sector, the public sector and education - in retraining”.
In other words, it will require a set of new skills.
The rapid adoption of automation and GenAI will free up working hours equivalent to these 1.3 million jobs and "these hours can be dedicated to other tasks with greater added value, which will lead to an increase in productivity", reads the study "Future of Work: Automation with GenAI: A unique opportunity to improve productivity in Portugal", prepared by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), in collaboration with the Nova School of Business and Economics (SBE).
The increase in productivity "will result in the compensation of hours freed up and the creation of more hours of labour demand, resulting in a positive jump in working hours equivalent to +0.3 million jobs".
According to the study, the potential impact on increasing productivity "depends on a structural effort to say that the workforce will be reallocated to the new tasks resulting from the adoption of technology", which includes reskilling and upskilling.
The report points out that the rapid adoption of these technologies will impact around 30% of the labour market, requiring new technological and social skills equivalent to new tasks, and that around 320,000 people will have to be relocated, especially those in more predictable, repetitive tasks with direct exposure to customers (customer service and administrative support).
"In the context of vocational training, we need to create an educational component for people already in the labour market today," argues Duarte Begonha.
The study warned that the lack of a national retraining and relocation agenda "will prevent the full capture of the opportunity at risk of unemployment".
For example, "a delay in relocating people of -20 % will impact GDP growth (-0.5-0.7 percentage points) and the risk of an increase in unemployment (250,000 people still to be relocated)".
The document said that in the fastest adoption scenario, by 2030, occupations that depend mostly on basic cognitive skills will suffer the biggest decline and, therefore, reduce the need for these skills.
Conversely, "there will be a significant increase in technological skills, with the number of jobs requiring these skills, as the main ones, increasing by 38%".
Social skills will also "be more necessary", as the number of jobs increases by 17%.
On the other hand, the increase in technological, social and emotional skills "will cut across all income levels" and basic cognitive skills "will be much less relevant than they are today on lower incomes".
According to the study, Singapore and Estonia are benchmarks "of good practice in implementing strategic plans on this scale".
ALU/ADB // ADB.
Lusa
