Lost jobs
There is a certain poignancy to the sight of men in bright green “Official Photographer” vests quietly watching families and barkadas taking selfies in front of the Rizal monument in Luneta Park. In the era of digital cameras and camera phones, one has to wonder if these men still manage to sell their wares of souvenir photos. (Remember how people would say, “magpa-kodak tayo!”?)
Documentaries have been made about the “litratista” of Luneta; and through interviews, we find that many of them have spent decades taking photos and raised families on this once lucrative livelihood. Though ubiquitous digicams and smartphones have now made their services much harder to sell, this is their craft. This is all they know.
There are similar stories of cab drivers impacted by Grab and Uber, and small cable companies being eased out by online streaming video. Traditional retail shops are feeling the pressure from online stores with lower overhead costs and hence often lower prices.
The reduced demand for certain types of jobs is a reality that comes with advancing technology and changing times. This is the uncomfortable side of progress that confronts all of us. Tablet computing pioneer and author Jerry Kaplan paints a picture of this reality: “Machines and computers don’t perform jobs. They automate tasks… If a job involves a narrow well-defined set of duties, then indeed your employment is at risk.”
The bad news is that if the task can be distilled into a set of instructions, then that set of instructions may just as well be given to a machine. But the good news is the distinction that computers don’t perform jobs, so are not poised to take away all employment.
While the roving photographers of Luneta are having a hard time, this has not stopped many creative young people from venturing into photography. Freelance event photography is thriving, as Filipinos want to capture their special occasions in unique ways. Special services like drone photography, same day edits, boudoir shoots, or even photo booths with props and costumes are keeping the modern “litratista” in business. And as online selling thrives, professionally done product photography could give sellers competitive advantage, and give photographers yet another niche market. Amateur photojournalism is also in the spotlight, with an amateur photojournalist from Australia recently winning the Pulitzer Prize by documenting President Duterte’s war on drugs. Photography as a craft is not dead.
A historical textbook example of jobs not going obsolete in the face of automation is how there are still tellers sitting behind bank counters despite automatic teller machines and online banking. Bank tellers now also function as sales and customer care representatives, selling new financial services and guiding customers through banking procedures. As with photography, jobs that require creativity and innovation are not going away soon. As with bank tellers, we don’t expect to see a decline in jobs that are still best handled with human interaction. Nurses and caregivers, counselors and teachers are clear examples of jobs that cannot readily be relegated to machines.
It is optimistic to think that the problem will be confined to specific sectors or will not be a problem at all. In a country where business process outsourcing (BPO) is a major driver of growth, and a significant percentage of the population is employed as manual labor in agriculture, it is prudent to look at contingency plans for jobs that can be replaced by automation. After all, if Siri (iPhone’s voice personal assistant app) can understand our questions and come up with snarky answers, how long will it take before the more mechanical BPO jobs are taken over by algorithms and bots?
But history has already taught us that there’s a way out of this doomsday scenario. People need not lose jobs entirely; they just need to prepare for a change in job description. The above illustrations do not spell an apocalypse in the job market; it is more a problem of a job and skills mismatch. Government, schools and firms alike must find ways to address this mismatch to avert large-scale dislocation in the jobs market.
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