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Islanders need to assess if their jobs are likely to be replaced by a computer and change careers if necessary, the politician behind Jersey’s new population policy has said.
With a third of all jobs currently performed by humans predicted to be redundant in fewer than 15 years, as automation and artificial intelligence grow, Deputy Rowland Huelin said islanders should start to assess now if their job could be in that approximately 30% - and look at retraining if it is.
He told a Scrutiny panel reviewing the policy, which is due to be debated next month, that 'future-proofing' island workers was a key tenet of the strategy – not only to protect jobs but also to increase productivity and reduce Jersey’s reliance on inward migration.
He told the Migration and Population Review Panel: “The core of the policy is to progressively reduce our reliance on net-inward migration within the common agreed strategic policy. Unless islanders themselves wish to play their part in reducing our reliance, then I’m afraid this will never be successful.
“This is a call out to ask all islanders to be involved.”
Deputy Huelin said that people needed to acknowledge that the problem was complicated, with older islanders in surveys tending to call for net-zero migration while younger people, particularly those not born in the island, being more receptive to increasing numbers.
Pictured: Assistant Chief Minister Rowland Huelin is leading the Government’s work on population.
A key issue, he added, was the ‘dependency ratio’ – the number of islanders aged either under 16, or over 65, divided by those of working age.
“We have an ageing population which is here to stay,” he said. “However, if we reduce the numbers of people who are active, the dependency ratio gets higher.
“The only way we can counteract this is to be more productive, so we need to ensure that businesses work far better, be it through the adoption of technology to increase their productivity, or alternatively, by encouraging our entrepreneurs to diversify their businesses to more productive businesses.
'We want them to do really well so they will pay more tax per person.
“However, we can’t be solely relying on those who are financially active because our society needs those people who aren’t financially active to provide invaluable services to our island.”
The Deputy said that net-zero migration was the Government’s ultimate aspiration, although he conceded that it was a “utopian” aim that could not currently be realised.
He said: “I’m not going to say it is achievable today with the data that I see, with the dependency ratio that we see, with the ageing population that we see, with our current business model, and with the productivity of our finance sector, which for some reasons beyond our control has halved over the last 20 years.
“That is going in the wrong direction and doesn’t help the dependency ratio nor the finances of our working population.
Pictured: The Government wants more people to work for longer if they want to.
“We need to change many core things: we need to diversify our economy and increase the productivity of our finance sector, in order to ensure we are bringing in the tax income we need in order to ensure we can provide for the community.”
The ‘Common Population Policy’, which Members will debate next month, does not establish a target population. Instead, it says that more data is needed before actual numbers can be decided, which will be in 2025.
After that, it says every Council of Ministers should publish a population policy each political term. It also says that a population update should be included in each Government Plan.
For now, Deputy Huelin said the Government was taking “baby steps” to start with.
“The first thing is for everyone to acknowledge how complicated the issue is,” he said. “People can also start thinking about how they can play their part. One of them is skills: we need to encourage an attitude of lifelong learning, so people aren’t just productive but productive in exciting and interesting things that they can do going forward.
“This includes changing careers, not because they’re forced into doing something, for example through redundancy, but because it is a positive thing to do. We need to be more proactive and forward thinking.”
He added: “PwC estimates that by 2035, between 30%-35% of jobs as we know them today will be replaced by robotics or AI technology. Subsequently, PwC have revised that to say it is worse – it is earlier, and it is more jobs lost.
“We have to be aware of that; it is a red flag.
“But I see it as a great opportunity. If we are prepared for it, if we focus on skills and lifelong learning, if people are adaptable and recognise which roles will be no longer directly applicable because of technology, if we can re-skill or repurpose ourselves positively, then we use it to our advantage.
“We do not want to have a large number of people knocking on the Social Security Minister’s door. If we are prepared for it, it becomes an opportunity on which we will thrive. If we ignore it, it becomes a disaster.”
Speaking after the hearing, Chair of the Migration and Population Review Panel, Senator Steve Pallett, said: “Our hearing with the Assistant Chief Minister highlighted that the proposed population policy is particularly focused on the longer-term future of Jersey and the actions to be taken by next Government.
"The Panel recognises that further data is required to make informed decisions about levels of inward migration, however, it is also keen to establish, as part of this review, how the policy will impact Islanders in the shorter to medium term and whether sufficient actions are being taken by the current Government to address this.”
Population policy "will be no silver bullet"
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