When it comes to our economic and business future, we keep asking the wrong question. Governments are setting up task forces to study “the future of jobs”. CEOs fund glossy campaigns about “the jobs of tomorrow”. Even the World Economic Forum issues its annual “Future of Jobs” report as if the idea of a job were a fixed star around which the economy will forever orbit. Yet the truth is more complex, and complicated.
The industrial-age job – a single employer, a stable title, a monthly salary – is losing its place as the organising unit of work. What lies ahead is not the end of work but the fragmentation of it. The future of work is not about jobs, it is about economic inclusion.
Three great forces are converging at once.
Intelligent automation is quietly redrawing what needs a human hand or mind. Robots and AI are no longer experiments in factories; they are the production line. The global stock of industrial robots has passed 4 million, and most are installed in Asia. South Korea leads the world in robot density. At the same time, generative AI has moved from novelty to infrastructure. Code is written by AI agents, who also can handle customer service, and back-office routines are disappearing into algorithms.
Forecasts differ on how many roles will vanish or emerge, but that’s the wrong metric.
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