Southeast Asia is going to have a major battle on their hands over the coming decades, as the human workforce will lose jobs and livelihoods due to automation. According to a study by the International Labour Organisation around 137 million workers, from Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam, will be vulnerable. This is over 50 percent of the workforce of the country.
This begs the question, what happens to these people? The economy of the country will be booming, since automation also means more products manufactured per hour than it would have been with humans. But, will that translate into jobs elsewhere for them?
All these five countries produce goods for Europe and America, for sporting companies and big chains. From garments to footwear, technology products to many others, these countries reap the benefits of trade agreements with the first world countries. But laying off such a large portion of their workforce will certainly have some repercussions.
Take the textile industry for instance. Around 64 percent of Indonesian workers, 86 percent of workers in Vietnam and 88 percent of workers in Cambodia, all in textiles, will lose their jobs to robots. None of these people have the knowledge or the skill to make a quick switch to perhaps the service industry, which is constantly growing. A blue collared workers has a very narrow scope of transition.
The governments will need to undertake serious planning and development if they can hope to rehabilitate these workers. Lucky for them, this transition from human workforce to an automated one will take some time.
