The global thinkers at the World Economic Forum have produced a new report drilling down into the automation workplace revolution, which they call the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The report focuses on world trends and has no specifics about the job losses of individual countries, at least that I could find in a brief search & skim of the paper, titled The Future of Jobs: Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

It isn’t surprising to treat automation as a global phenomenon, because its effects are very similar throughout the industrialized world and in developing nations too, because of the decreasing price of robots. Every business tries to lower its costs, and so they all will use smart machines to survive.

One interesting item is the forecast of a total loss of 7.1 million jobs, offset by a gain of 2 million new positions: that figure give an estimated ratio of old jobs destroyed to new jobs created. There are a number of cheerful public voices opining that the coming disruption will be minor and the new jobs will make up for the ones lost, but the Davos thinkers have come out with the pessimistic view, seeing severe job reduction as the net result.

For an example of that discussion, see Automation Debate: Will Smart Machines Disrupt the Economic Order or Not? where Martin Ford (author of Rise of the Robots) politely takes the negative, realistic side.

Finally, there is not a whole lot that can be done about technological unemployment, but the government should at least end immigration, a vestige of earlier centuries which needs to be put aside as being obsolete, along with homesteading. Workers should no longer to be imported because citizens will need all of the remaining jobs.