THE Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is eyeing to further boost the country’s manufacturing sector, which it deems the cushion to reduce an estimated 6 million job losses in the agriculture sector, with the Fourth Industrial Revolution (FIR).
Citing a 2018 study from McKinsey Global Institute on the employment impact of Industry 4.0, Trade Undersecretary Rafaelita M. Aldaba said a total of 18.2 million jobs could be lost in the country due to automation.
“And mostly, it’s gonna affect agriculture with 6 million jobs being lost due to automation; retail, 3.4 million jobs; in manufacturing, 2.4 million jobs,” Aldaba said in a Palace briefing. On top of this, the agriculture sector is also seen to have the highest risk to automation at 90 percent, according to a 2019 study conducted by the Asian Institute of Management (AIM).
Agriculture, forestry and fishing was also seen to have the highest average probability of jobs being automated at 90 percent, followed by finance and insurance at 79 percent and mining and quarrying at 78 percent.
In a separate interview, Aldaba told the BusinessMirror that there’s hope for the agricultural workers who may lose their jobs due to automation, as the potential job losses give the government even more reason to really develop the manufacturing sector.
From the current average manufacturing growth rate of 7.3 percent, Aldaba said she personally wants to see this sector post a double-digit growth as high as 10 percent by 2030.
“Those who will be losing their jobs in agriculture will be transferred to manufacturing,” she said. That is why manufacturing should be developed because it will absorb [the job losses],” she said.
Despite the transfer of agriculture workers to manufacturing, she said this will not spell the death of the agriculture sector, adding that a non-labor intensive agriculture sector can still result in a huge production.
“Even if you have less people, [if you’re] using technology, your production will still be huge. Can you imagine how other countries were able to sustain their agriculture sector which is not labor-intensive? It is because they are using machines that will allow you to do agriculture in large tracts of land,” she said.
Besides, the manufacturing sector provides high-paying jobs with benefits, she added.
“If you will not grow the manufacturing sector, where will the agriculture workers go? They cannot be absorbed by call centers. Otherwise , they will just go sell [things] or go to retail, which are also low-value jobs but if they go to manufacturing, they will have high-paying jobs,” she said.