Daily Archives: July 8, 2017

Nearly two-thirds of Inland jobs are at risk in the next 20 years due to automation, according to researchers at the University of Redlands.

Warehouse workers lead a list from the Institute of Spatial Economic Analysis, a division of the universitys school of business.

The Inland Empire had 55,660 warehouse jobs in 2016, with 47,310 of them automatable, according to ISEA. The average annual wage was $29,010.

In second and third place were retail salespeople and cashiers, with 82,400 of 87,280 jobs endangered between them.

Food services leads ISEAs list of job categories that could be transformed, with 87.3 percent of jobs capable of being automated.

Farming and sales and retail came in second and third, with 86.6 and 8.25 percent of jobs automatable.

Overall, research ranked 62.7 percent of jobs in the Riverside/San Bernardino metropolitan area as expected to be automated. The region had1,362,440 jobs earning $63.8 billion in 2016, according to ISEA.

To be very clear, that just means the share of jobs that are technically automatable, said JohannesMoenius, director of the institute. That doesnt mean the number of jobs that are going to be lost.

The institute reached its conclusions by combining research from a 2013 Oxford University study on the future of employment with data from the U.S.Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The Oxford study numerically ranked 700 jobs for probability of computerization. On the low end were such occupations as recreational therapists, dentists and choreographers. On the high end were such occupations as restaurant hosts, tax preparers and telemarketers.

ISEA is rolling out its results in phases and plans to eventually have maps online showing automatable jobs by ZIP code.

The first phase looks at demographics, with black, Hispanic and young workers most at risk.

Differences in educational attainment likely explain the differences between demographic groups, wrote lead researcher Jess Chen. Young people, workers of Hispanic ethnicity and African-Americans all tend to have lower educational attainment and therefore tend to work in jobs at a higher risk of automation.

Women also fall in the higher-risk group.

Experts have long said the Inland Empire is held back by having too few workers with educations beyond high school.

ISEAs research came out at the same time as a report by the Public Policy Institute of California called Meeting Californias Need for College Graduates.

It says that college graduation needs to increase here, in Los Angeles County and in the San Joaquin Valley to avoid a shortfall of 1 million educated workers by 2025.

The Inland Empire and the San Joaquin Valley together only award about 12 percent of the states bachelors degrees, even though they produce 27 percent of Californias high school diplomas, the report states.

ISEAs report shows vulnerabilities but doesnt attempt to predict what will happen in job sectors. Chen and Moenius point out that technology has historically been a job creator.

For every local job that has come in that has been a high creativity job, you had four or five new jobs created that were not requiring a high level of education, said Moenius. But with automation, we just dont know whether this ratio will still hold. That is the big question. But there will be new jobs coming in.

Its starting to happen at Norco College, according to Kevin Fleming, dean ofinstruction, career and technical education.

Fleming, in a phone interview, said Norcos digital electronics program is partnering with Loma Linda University to work on wiring for robotic prosthetic limbs.

Its not as if the skills are so advanced everybody needs a PhD, he said of technologys advances.

Its important that our high schools, K-12, as well as junior colleges and universities continue to evolve the curriculum As a region we want to make sure our students are aware of whats coming. I think thats the challenge of our educational community, to make sure were cutting-edge.

Fleming does not foresee an end to the service-based economy.

Definitely our cars are more computerized. Theres technology and automation involved in car maintenance, but I dont think we could ever drive into a car dealership and not see a human being.

Moenius said technology creates jobs in three ways:

Launching entirely new professions, such as mobile app developers.

Replacing occupations, such as turning assembly line workers into engineers who program robots.

Lowering costs of goods, which makes them more in demand and increases the need for workers.

Look at the U.S. right now, he observed. We are close to full employment, so all the technological progress we have seen in the last decades has not led to mass unemployment. So in the long run, I think this is where we will end up again.

What I am worried about is that in the medium run (5 to 10 years) the speed of deployment of robots and AI in the service sector will be fast enough to lead to substantial labor savings, meaning unemployment, and that the economy will not be able to create new jobs at a speedy enough pace to keep up with this.

What it is: One of the spatial studies programs at the University of Redlands that helps business and government understand their communities.

What it does: Publishes reports retail, employment, housing, logistics and other topics.

Information:www.iseapublish.com

Source: ISEA

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Find out which local jobs are threatened by automation - Press-Enterprise

Amazon's Alexa AI. Robots have the potential to both enrich human society and polarise wealth distribution. Rick Wilking : Reuters

As robots and automated services increase in number globally, scholars have been quick to point to the potential threat such developments pose to a harmonious society.

Are these concerns reasonable and do Arabian Gulf economies' unique features generate distinct dynamics?

Before discussing the threats, one must first acknowledge that labour-saving and productivity-enhancing technological innovations are fundamentally beneficial. If you are concerned about discoveries that diminish the need for human handsthen recall that once upon a time, in the days of hunter-gatherer societies, including the Gulf Bedouin civilisation, unemployment was zero, because everyone spent all day eking out a living. Labour-saving technology is a key reason why you can consume so much today, starting with farming, which allows society to feed itself while only dedicating a small percentage of the population to the task. The labour hours saved by replacing hunting and gathering with farming have ended up being used to produce more advanced commodities, such as clothes, carsand mobile telephones.

Therefore, when a fast-food restaurant introduces automated order-delivery stations, your first impulse should be: Great! Society can now produce more in total, as the people previously taking customer orders can now perform other jobs. A good illustration is ATMs. Prior to their invention, most bank employees were cashiers, leading to big restrictions on the speed and availability of cash withdrawal services. Today, most bank employees are able to deliver advanced services at a low cost, such as investment advice or help with managing a small business, precisely because technology has freed them up to perform such tasks.

However, technological progress is not unambiguously desirableand it carries two risks.

The first is unfavourable changes in the distribution of wealth and income. While innovation increases the total size of the economic pie, it may also modify the sizes of the slices that people earnand, in particular, certain groups may lose even if society as a whole gains, or inequality might become very acute. For example, when Japan developed cultured pearls in the early 20th century, the world instantly became able to produce more pearlsbut pearl divers in Bahrain lost their livelihoods. The younger ones may have been mentally nimble enough to pursue alternative professionsbut the older ones were essentially doomed to a lower standard of living.

Why not just compensate those losing out, possibly by taxing those benefiting from the improvement? Many people think that is the best way to deal with technological progress, including the rise of robots, but practical implementation can be challenging. In particular, correctly identifying winners and losers in a dynamic economy is nearly impossibleand so any rule will inevitably encourage fictitious claims of being a loser rather than a beneficiary, in an attempt to secure handouts and avoid taxes. This is why some favour restrictions on a the roll out of a technology, most famously the Luddites of the British Industrial Revolution, who destroyed the textile weaving machines that threatened their livelihoods.

The second risk associated with technological progress is that it might change our culture and norms in an undesirable way, independently of concerns relating to inequity. For example, many Gulf citizens today complain that smartphones have stunted peoples ability to engage in sustained, meaningful conversations, be they at the dinner table or in the majlises that constitute the backbone of social relations. In the case of robots, there is a fear that society's more modestly skilled workers will suffer a crisis of self-esteem if technology leaves them unable to hold down a regular job, even if they are compensated financially. Most would agree it would be unhealthy to have 20 per centof a labour force catatonically staringat the TV out of sheer boredom.

In the case of the GCC, I recently asked my University of Bahrain students (MA public policy) to predict any GCC-specific threats or opportunities relating to robots and automation. A popular response reflected the uneasy relationship that Gulf nationals sometimes have with migrant workers. While the economic benefits accruing to citizens and migrants from the abundance of foreign workers are evident to most observers, Gulf citizens tend to fixate on the fact that they have become minorities in their own countriesand feel that their cultural norms are threatened. For example, in The Dubai Mall, the operator ofthe establishment has arranged for signs reminding patrons to refrain from wearing revealing clothing or physical displays of affectionbecause nationals are too small in number to set an effective example.

Since migrant workers in the Gulf are concentrated in low-skilled jobs, some Gulf citizens welcome the opportunity to displace these workers with robots, perceiving it as an opportunity to reaffirm traditional Islamic and Gulf values.

Whatever ones inclination, it is worth bearing in mind two maxims regarding technological progress. First, as the Luddite example indicates, people have been fearing innovation for centuries. Yet, the world is a better placeand so we should ease our concerns. Second, since the middle of the 18th century, nobody has had much success stopping progress.

We welcome economics questions from our readers through email on omar@omar.ecor on twitter via@omareconomics

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The risks and rewards of automation - The National

The FDAs latest draft guidance on the Drug Supply Chain Security Acts (DSCSA) product identifier requirements gives pharmaceutical manufacturers a little breathing room, as enforcement of the original November 2017 deadline gets pushed back a year.

But this news should not inject indolence into the industry, because the reality is, nothing has changed except that companies wont be facing enforcement of the requirementsuntil November of 2018.

To be clear: the law remains intact and this should not be seen as a sign that the FDA is easing off the industryat all. In fact, I asked a few industry experts what this change means, and it seems to be a friendly gesture by the FDA to give the companies that are way behind in compliance some more time. But there are no free rides here. In fact, it just means stricter enforcements in the future.

It is more than likely that this suspension of enforcement for 12 months will entail a complete zero-tolerance approach in 2018 as anyone not in compliance would technically have been in violation of the law for a full year, said Dave Harty, vice president of professional services at Adents, a maker of unit identification serialization and traceability software.

In short, pharmaceutical companies and CMOs producing prescription medicines will not be penalized if they do not meet the upcoming serialization deadline of November 2017, Harty explained. But, and this is very important, the original deadline remains unchanged. You still are legally required to serialize prescription medicines intended for distribution to the American market before the end of the year.

Peter Sturtevant, senior director of industry engagement for GS1 US, agrees. Even though it may seem like manufacturers have the luxury of an additional year, the FDAs enforcement delay has no direct impact on the Act itself.It would require an act of Congress to change DSCSA, he said. The question for manufacturers now becomes, when November 27th approaches, do we want to be compliant with the law or not? The FDA announcement means it will not enforce any penalties on manufacturers for non-compliance of the serialization requirement, but it still makes good business sense for manufacturers to continue to prepare their production lines for serialization.

Indeed, the law is not expected to change, even though theres been industry speculation that the Trump administration is angling to eliminate regulations that burden businesses unnecessarily. But this law is not about creating problems for pharma companies. Rather, it is meant to protect the consumer by keeping counterfeit products out of the supply chain.

The next obvious observation, however, is, how this will impact the downstream deadlines for repackagers (November 2018), distributors (November 2019) and dispensers (November 2020), which must comply with the same serialization mandates.

There is a strong possibility downstream trading partners will experience cascading discretionary delays as a result of this announcement, as we saw this happen the last time there were discretionary enforcement delays on two different occasions for phase one of DSCSA for the lot-based requirement, Sturtevant said.

Similarly, Dirk Rodgers, a regulatory strategist with Systech International and the founder of RxTrace, noted in an article that, by not enforcing the manufacturers requirement to apply the new DSCSA product identifier on all drug packages by this November, the FDA is forced to soften some of the deadlines for other segments of the supply chain. But, he added, that the new draft guidance makes it clear that the repackager, distributor and dispenser deadlines will still be enforced for product that the manufacturer introduced into commerce with the new DSCSA product identifier before November 27, 2017.

In addition, Rodgers noted that other than the product identifier enforcement delays, manufacturers should be aware that there are a number of requirements that will still go into effect on November 27, 2017. In his article, Rodgers stated: Manufacturers must begin to provide the transaction information, transaction history and transaction statement in electronic format only, except when selling directly to a licensed healthcare practitioner who is authorized to prescribe medication under State law, or to other licensed individuals who are under the supervision or direction of such a practitioner who dispenses product in the usual course of professional practice.

The bottom line here is that nothing has changed, because, as noted, Congress set the deadlines and only Congress can change the deadlines. And, Rodgers points out that because the FDA is the agency that enforces the law, they can choose to enforce it selectivelyparticularly to minimize possible disruptions in the distribution of prescription drugs in the United States.

For now, the FDAand hopefully the industryis still on track to meet the 2023 deadline for full serialization interoperability with track and trace for all supply chain trading partners.

So, pharma manufacturers, take a breath, but keeping moving forward on thisquickly.

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The DSCSA Delay: What it Means to Manufacturers - Automation World