Over 40% of PH workforce needs reskilling amid automation

MANILA – As industries embrace automation with the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0), more than 40 percent of the Filipino workforce needs reskilling and upskilling.

During the Manufacturing Summit Thursday, McKinsey Singapore’s Digital Capability Centre in Asia Pacific partner and leader Alpesh Patel said jobs in the Philippines will also be impacted by the shift to automation among industries globally.

Patel said although 17 percent of jobs will be replaced by automation, 18 percent more jobs will be created in the labor market due to automation and higher productivity, which translates to a 1 percent net effect on future labor demand.

“There can be a net positive effect on the labor in spite of automation,” he said.

Among the sectors that can be highly automated include accommodation and food services, transportation and warehousing, retail trade, manufacturing, wholesale trade, and construction.

“What does that mean? We will need to redesign the future of work for Industry 4.0 And how that would look like? If we think about the Industry 4.0, it is you are digitizing role, digitizing activities that were previously purely operational,” Patel said.

He said new skills that needed to be acquired are related to data science.

Among sectors in the Philippines, Patel identified that manufacturing has the highest potential of automation at 61 percent.

This is followed by transportation and storage at 55 percent, accommodation and food services at 54 percent, agriculture at 48 percent, and retail and wholesale at 48 percent. (PNA)

Agencies