According to different experts, certain professions, such as teacher or nurse, can never be automated. Find out which skills are worth investing in.
There are disturbing technologies, such as artificial intelligence and the so-called big data, which are changing the way we work. Jobs like store seller are disappearing in the United States, while factories are filling up with robots instead of workers.
In China, the manufacturing industry that fled other countries to find cheap labor here is also filling up with machines. Studies reveal that new technologies threaten about 40% of jobs in the United States, and two-thirds of jobs in the developing world.
However, there is one type of work - difficult and indispensable - that seems impossible to automate: that which requires emotional skills.
Read: Changing Classrooms for Orchards and Pencils for Vegetables
Emotional Skills
There is artificial intelligence software that is being developed to recognize emotions in the face of people and their voices, but it is far from simulating genuine empathy.
Computers are nowhere near competing with humans in terms of understanding and connecting with another human being. Philosophers have been postulating for centuries that a machine with true feelings is impossible. If these jobs can not be automated, and will continue to be required in the future, workers with emotional skills will be in high demand in the coming decades.
For the time being, these jobs are poorly rewarded: a survey conducted by Business Insider revealed that among the worst paid professions are child care workers and school teachers. Emotional skills include all those that allow us to recognize emotional states in ourselves and in others, as well as responding appropriately to them.
Emotional workers
These skills are broad, but at the same time go unnoticed, and are part of a huge chain of unexpected jobs. It's the supermarket cashier who kindly asks you how you are. It is the supervisor correcting an employee who has made a mistake, but at the same time making him feel appreciated and capable. He is a salesperson who looks at the face of a potential customer to determine if he is skeptical of the offer he has just made.
As robots begin to occupy our routine jobs, the ability to work well together with other people is becoming a factor of success in the office.
In 2016 the World Bank evaluated 27 studies on employees, and found that 79% of them highlighted a social-emotional ability, such as honesty or ability to work in a team, as a determining factor for a worker's qualification.
Health
Emotional skills are critical in patient care, where there is an urgent demand for more staff. Given the aging of the population in many countries - and consequently the growth of non-communicable diseases - the World Health Organization estimates that by 2030 the world will need 40 million workers dedicated to the care of the sick.
Projections indicate that the training of these professionals will be short for 18 million. The numbers include doctors with high training and technicians, who know how to relate to patients is a complementary skill. They also cover a wide variety of jobs, whose main function is to support and communicate with patients.
Effective care of the sick requires men and women who can work together with diabetic patients to make substantial changes in their lifestyles; Who can converse with adults on contraceptives and who can do many tasks that require empathy.
Education
Education is another industry where emotional connection is needed, and automation is unlikely. Teaching young people requires human interaction in order to motivate students, detect potential developmental problems, and instill social skills.
The online courses were seen at some point as a way to raise the educational level, which allowed everyone to learn for free what they wanted, but in the end ended up being a disappointment.
The estimated percentage of those completing the courses is between 4% and 15%. The success rate is even worse among the less educated young adults living in poor communities who were expected to be the main beneficiaries.
In contrast, as sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom discovered, for-profit universities manage to attract and keep their students engaged by employing an army of employees who offer personal support.
Related: "Students must learn to keep learning"
Investment needed
Personnel capable of tackling health and education tasks are irreplaceable, but the cost of an empathic, attentive and well-trained staff makes this kind of help out of the reach of many.
In most regions of the United States, even the basic assistance for a family with a four-year-old and an eight-year-old equals more than they pay for renting a home. The cost of medical care for infants is more expensive than four years of public school.
Meanwhile, adequate care for an older person usually costs more than $ 45,000 a year, more than 80% of the average income in a household. At this time, an immense part of the education and health systems receive funding from governments. Primary schools and colleges almost always have public resources, and in many countries that includes preschool education.
Regarding health, even in the United States, where the private sector plays such a significant role, 64% of the cost is assumed by the government.
Collect what it's worth
As the world's population grows, more money is needed in training workers with emotional skills, and the pay they receive should reflect the importance of their work. According to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on developing countries, a higher payment for a teacher is directly related to a better performance of its students. And it is starting to work in that direction.
Despite financial constraints, there are programs that have public resources and are hiring emotional workers for all kinds of tasks. They pay people with mental illnesses to work with other counselors, as well as yoga instructors and mindfulness who work with children at risk. In fact, there are governments that are paying people to carry out social care activities, which were previously carried out without compensation.
Many countries in Europe assign families with children an annual bonus to help them compensate for income so that one of the parents can stay home or work part-time to care for their children.
It is possible to make this type of initiatives reach a greater dimension in the future, while avoiding devastating levels of unemployment and poverty, if part of the increasing profits produced by the automation of other sectors is used.
Automation has the potential to create enormous global wealth, and it is vital that part of those resources be channeled into jobs that involve all of our human capabilities so that we can help each other thrive.