The technological revolution, manifested in artificial intelligence and robotics, is coming at a crucial time for developed countries. Europe, the United States, and most OECD countries will experience depopulation processes—meaning a reduction in the number of people of working age. This scenario suggests that automation, the roboticization of work, and the use of new technologies can mitigate the need to create new job positions. Consequently, many new vacancies that would be difficult to fill under conditions where new technologies emerge will be automatically eliminated. In a situation of a shrinking workforce, these could be solutions that help improve productivity. As a result, companies will continue to be profitable and maintain competitive conditions compared to the rest of the world, where populations are growing.
“We are dealing with a situation in which I do not expect job replaceability, but rather a situation where it will be a mechanism limiting tensions in the labor market that the demographic process will cause,” said Andrzej Kubisiak, deputy director at the Polish Economic Institute, to eNewsroom.pl. “From calculations for Poland, I can say that by 2035, the number of people of working age will decrease by 2.1 million people. That means the workforce in Poland will decrease by 12.5% just in the next 10 years. To fill this gap based on current mechanisms of migrant inflow, we would need to double the influx of foreigners compared to what we have seen in the last 10 years. This is actually an unrealistic scenario considering that the circumstances we had, for example, with the influx of refugees due to the war in Ukraine, will not repeat themselves. Therefore, the situation we are facing in the future gives us a clear answer. There is a need for intensified investment in technological solutions—both on the side of industry, logistics, construction in the case of blue-collar workers, and the use of algorithms, artificial intelligence in the case of white-collar workers and the broadly defined professional services sector,” predicts Andrzej Kubisiak.
