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The rapid advancement of technology has brought about tremendous changes to people’s lives; it creates jobs, alters the demands for skills, and changes the traditional patterns of work. Technology is quietly transforming the way we will work in the future. 1. Technology creates jobs. Generally speaking, advances in science and technology have spurred the development of productivity, not only raising the overall standard of living but also bringing about changes in the economic structure and society, as well as facilitating the emergence of new job opportunities. Just as the development of social media has changed the ways in which information is disseminated, the emergence of online trading platforms has expanded market opportunities for businesses, bringing broad benefits to society as well. On the other hand, falling machine costs put some low-skilled workers at risk of unemployment. For example, in the manufacturing sector, the unemployment caused by the rise of robots has sparked concerns about future jobs and led to lively discussions. Technological advancements have significantly affected the demand for three types of skills: general cognitive skills, specific job skills, and social-emotional skills. Among them, the returns from advanced cognitive and socio-emotional skills increase. People with higher skills can make better use of new technologies and adapt to the changing nature of work. Higher education offers the highest return, with a growth rate of 15% per year. In fact, the faster technology develops, the more efficient education becomes. Some service jobs have also been affected by automation. For example, Baidu has partnered with China Golden Dragon Motor Group to introduce autonomous buses in industrial parks ； South Korea has opened a 360,000-square-meter facility named K-City to test driverless cars ； Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, relies on artificial intelligence to make loan decisions in 35% of cases, with this proportion expected to rise to 70% within less than five years ； China’s Ant Financial uses big data to evaluate loan agreements, rather than hiring thousands of credit officers or lawyers. Economists are keen to predict the number of job losses in the wave of technological progress, but such predictions are often unconvincing due to differences in ** or regional conditions, as well as varying degrees of adoption and adaptation of technology. Technology has also created new job opportunities, especially in high-tech fields. For example, in the field of fintech, while traditional loan officers face unemployment, new jobs related to risk management or data analysis have been created to manage databases and optimize algorithms for digital lending. Similarly, sectors such as the software industry, the Internet of Things industry, and mobile application development have also created many new job opportunities. 2. Changes in skill requirements: The impact of technological development on skill requirements varies across different regions of the world. First, the decline in employment in the manufacturing sector is usually due to technological changes. Secondly, technology is changing the skills that were once highly valued in the labor market. The importance of skills that robots cannot replace—such as cognitive skills like critical thinking, as well as social-emotional skills like management and teamwork—is on the rise. Once again, technology is changing the traditional boundaries of businesses in order to expand global value chains and alter the geography of employment, thereby influencing production. Finally, technology is changing the way people work, thereby promoting economic development. Technology is changing the demand for three skills in daily work. First, in both developed and emerging economies, the demand for unconventional cognitive and socio-emotional skills seems to be rising ； Secondly, the demand for conventional work skills is declining ； Third, the returns for different combinations of skill types seem to be increasing. In addition to the skill requirements for employment, technology is changing the geographical location of work, as evidenced by the emergence of e-commerce and online work platforms. Finally, technology is changing the way people work and their working conditions. Digital technology does not involve \"standard\" long-term contracts, but rather generates more short-term jobs through online work platforms. These enable everyone to obtain certain types of jobs in a more flexible and easier manner. 3. A simple model of changing work: The overall future of work will depend on the competition between mechanization (automation) and innovation. Employment in traditional industries declines due to advances in mechanization (automation), while employment in emerging industries increases as a result of innovation. Unemployment in the traditional industrial sectors varies, as some industrial sectors are more amenable to automation than others. Over the past 30 years, mechanization (automation) has reduced the demand for workers with lower skills to varying degrees, while the innovation process generally favors those with higher education. This combination will increase inequality, but it is not an inevitable consequence of change. Ford’s assembly lines and Uber both show that innovation can also increase employment for low-skilled workers. The competition between innovation and mechanization (automation) affects not only Europe and the United States but also emerging economies. Agricultural mechanization in emerging economies could bring about the biggest shift in global employment; if cities in these economies do not create a large number of new job opportunities, agricultural mechanization could indeed lead to widespread unemployment. Employment growth in emerging economies is also driven by globalization. The logic of cost minimization, whether achieved within a company or through market competition, continuously drives the replacement of humans with machines or the relocation of production to locations with lower labor costs. Such flows between countries depend on the reduction of transportation and connection costs; this is the meaning of globalization. Source: https://yunrun.com.cn/