Want to stay relevant? Increase your digital skills!
Digitalization is a force that has already had huge impacts on the American economy and workforce. With digital technology’s ability to amplify the abilities and productivity of companies and workers, digitalization is expanding the potential of the American economy and changing the landscape of the job market. Having a good foundation in digital skills is more important than ever as jobs with low digital skills are shrinking. The ever evolving and expanding reach of technology will only increase the need for those with accomplished digital skills.
Digitalization has changed the job market by creating hundreds of roles that did not exist before. Facebook and Twitter came out a little over ten years ago, yet now there are various marketing jobs centered around social media. User experience designers, cloud specialists, and mobile app developers are just a few more.
Digitalization also changes the skills and responsibilities of more traditional jobs by permeating businesses’ processes and redefining their roles. About 70% of jobs require medium or high digital skill levels today, while in 2002 only 45% of roles required medium or high digital skills. Jobs requiring high digital skills have more than quadrupled since 2002. Unsurprisingly, the creation and transformation of jobs heavily favors digitally oriented occupations as opposed to jobs that require low digital skills.
Since digitalization is a form of automation, there is the lingering question of whether we should be leery of it. Articles abound about why we should fear – or not fear – automation. Digitalization reduces the demand for rote, routine manual or cognitive tasks as technology can replace it. Yet, it complements those who perform nonroutine, more creative problem-solving, and complex communication tasks. Roles comprised of more routine tasks will reshape, with technology handling the more rote tasks and humans concentrating on more valuable tasks only they can accomplish.
The truth is that whether you are welcoming of digitalization or not, it is here to stay. Even lower-end jobs traditionally accessible to newer or less-skilled workers now expect higher levels of digital skills. Virtually all industries have increased their digitalization scores since 2002. 33 million jobs that were considered to have a low digital skill level in 2002 are now considered medium.
How to Stay Relevant in an Increasingly Digital World:
.-Increase your digital skillset: Workers with superior digital skills tend to earn higher wages than similarly educated workers with lower digital skills. Those with higher digital skills may be marginally less exposed to automation. Higher competency in digital technology can help less advantaged workers secure better-quality jobs.
-Develop “soft” or “human” skills: Traits that computers lack are beginning to matter much more. Technology evolves at lightning speed and computational tasks are their forte. People cannot compete. However, machines do not possess uniquely human traits like innovation, interpersonal skills, curiosity, and social intelligence, so value lies in being adept at what computers cannot do well.
-Cultivate expertise in more complex, non-routine tasks and problem solving: Computers thrive at rote manual and cognitive tasks. The more complex and non-routine the skill, the less chance it can be replaced by technology. Non-routine jobs have grown steadily since the 1980s.
-Be adaptable: This qualifies as a soft human skill, but it is one of the most important. New IT applications are coming out constantly. These disrupt markets and alter the skills needed for jobs. Be open to learning those technologies and business models.
To read more about digitalization and the American workforce, check out this Brookings’ report.
-Christine Fettinger, Social Media/Digital Media Coordinator, Team Red Dog
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