People are said to fear and shiver when they hear about the roaring "automation tiger". Every journal, newspaper, television channel or blog of these times speaks about how jobs will be non existent or how people will be victims of progress and so on and so forth
Let me give you a reality check. I will take a few examples in the next few blogs to counter that view. Let me take you to mid 1980s. Anyone who was familiar with the banking sector know that computerization was spreading it's wings in the banking industry
There was great resistance from the bank unions and they were raising issues about job losses, the bane on humanity due to computerization spreading its tentacles and how it was not right for machines to take over jobs of people.
Looking back and now looking at where we are in 2017 gives us the right picture. Lets take the employment data of banks which are published on the RBI website
1995 - Employment 9.9 Lakh
1999 - Employment 10.17 Lakh
2005 - Employment 8.58 Lakh
2016 - Employment 12.6 Lakh
Now let me give a overall picture. What is show is direct employment by banks. In 2004-05 the banking sector saw a impact of sudden appearance of online banking and resultant drop in direct employment. Add up the indirect employment due to spiralling number of ATM's and the outsourced jobs due to automation and servers and systems being developed by third party vendors and the cash management juggernaut that manages ATM's and so on the employment opportunities only have increased.
Has the banking sector vanished today? Absolutely not. Today we have more banks, more branches and even more ATM’s than we ever thought. Digital Banking, Net Banking and Phone Banking are prevalent like never before. Unlike earlier days when banks hardly had products beyond savings accounts, current accounts, recurring deposits, fixed deposits and a few others… today banks are overflowing with hundreds of financial services and offerings.
So jobs are not disappearing but shifting.As society becomes more progressive economically disposable income rises, spending on leisure goods goes up, alternative services come up and more jobs are created.
Let me give you a reality check. I will take a few examples in the next few blogs to counter that view. Let me take you to mid 1980s. Anyone who was familiar with the banking sector know that computerization was spreading it's wings in the banking industry
Looking back and now looking at where we are in 2017 gives us the right picture. Lets take the employment data of banks which are published on the RBI website
1995 - Employment 9.9 Lakh
1999 - Employment 10.17 Lakh
2005 - Employment 8.58 Lakh
2016 - Employment 12.6 Lakh
Now let me give a overall picture. What is show is direct employment by banks. In 2004-05 the banking sector saw a impact of sudden appearance of online banking and resultant drop in direct employment. Add up the indirect employment due to spiralling number of ATM's and the outsourced jobs due to automation and servers and systems being developed by third party vendors and the cash management juggernaut that manages ATM's and so on the employment opportunities only have increased.
Has the banking sector vanished today? Absolutely not. Today we have more banks, more branches and even more ATM’s than we ever thought. Digital Banking, Net Banking and Phone Banking are prevalent like never before. Unlike earlier days when banks hardly had products beyond savings accounts, current accounts, recurring deposits, fixed deposits and a few others… today banks are overflowing with hundreds of financial services and offerings.
So jobs are not disappearing but shifting.As society becomes more progressive economically disposable income rises, spending on leisure goods goes up, alternative services come up and more jobs are created.
So the example of banking industry shows us the fact that automation is here to stay and not here to kill jobs alone. Automation and technology shifts help progress and the progress creates alternative job opportunities than what existed. There are few more examples that we will consider in coming posts. We can decide for ourselves if the automation tiger is hype or reality.
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