Automation and job replacement will be oneof the most significant challenges for the global economy of the comingdecades. A 2017 Mckinsey report established that 375 million workers will needto switch occupational categories by 2030. The World Economic Forum suggeststhat by 2022, automation will replace 75 million jobs globally—but create 133million new ones.

Research into the likelihood that a jobwill be impacted by digitization has largely focused on the \"automatability\"of the role and the following economic regional and political effects of this.What this research doesn\'t take into account is something more important forthe millions of taxi drivers and retail (零售)workers across the globe: their likelihood of being able to change to anotherjob that isn\'t automatable. Recent research suggests that the answer to thismay be that the skills that enable workers to move up the ladder to morecomplex roles within their current areas might be less important than broaderskills that will enable workers to change across divisions.

In July, Amazon announced that it wouldspend $700 million retraining around 30% of its 300,000 US workforce. Whilepraiseworthy, it will be interesting to see the outcome. In the UK, the NationalRetraining Scheme (方案) has largely been ledby employers, meaning that those on zero-hours contracts and part-timeworkers—often low-skilled—will miss out. Governance will be a crucial elementof ensuring that such schemes focus on individuals and life-long learning,rather than upskilling workers into roles that will soon also face automation.

According to the Mckinsey report, \"growingawareness of the scale of the task ahead has yet to translate into action.Public spending on labour-force training and support has fallen for years inmost member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation andDevelopment,\" which impacts more than just the low-skilled and poorlycompensated.

The global impact of automation is also putinto relief by research demonstrating that, between 1988 and 2015, incomeinequality increased throughout the world. Billions of people do not have theessentials of life as defined by the UN Sustainable Development goals.

Alongside climate change, automation isarguably tech\'s biggest challenge. As with globalization, governments andemployers—and us workers—ignore its potential consequences at risk toourselves.