A joint report by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and NASSCOM, the apex body representing the $154 billion (Rs 9,728 billion) IT-BPM industry, says that 37 percent of Indian workforce would be in jobs demanding radically different skill sets by the year 2020.

The report titled ‘Future of Skills and Jobs in India’ states that 9 percent of the workforce would be deployed in new jobs that do not currently exist today. The report unveiled at the FICCI’s flagship event, ‘Global Skills Summit’ on September 15, highlights the impact that various primary forces such as globalisation, demographics, and Industry 4.0/exponential technologies, are expected to have on the domestic key sectors.

As per the report, 50-55 percent of the workforce would be deployed in jobs that have radically changed skill sets (projected for 2020) and the evolving job roles include automobile analytics engineer, 3D printing technician, machine learning, vehicle cybersecurity expert and sustainability integration expert.

The future technologies and the internet are creating new employment opportunities in the areas of ‘white-collar’ working also known as gig economy, that includes online labour – software developers, creative and multimedia professionals, online sales and marketing professionals, writers, translators and data entry operators – with India being the leading country, that has a 24 percent share of the online labour market. Furthermore, other areas of job opportunities include technology aggregator models, e-commerce segment and tech start-ups with new business models.

In India, the future of jobs in the year 2022 would be determined by the country’s response to 12 megatrends that includes, under globalisation – the level of exports, rapid adoption of exponential technologies, increasing/shrinking overseas job market for Indian workforce and level of FDI flows. Under adoption of exponential technologies by Indian companies – evolution of products/services into smart connected products and services, acceleration of the optimisation of industry value chains, business innovation, demand for a resourceful planet and sustainability and new work arrangements. Lastly, under the demographic changes the rising size of the middle-class, high proportion of young population including millennials and increasing urbanisation.

Commenting on the report, Mohandas Pai, chairman, FICCI Skill Development Committee & chairman, Manipal Global Education, said that there was an urgent need to collate and analyse data to understand in which sectors jobs were being created, what were the skills that were needed by industries and employers, and how productivity could be enhanced with re-skilling of workforce.

 “The report attempts to present a 2022 picture – a time when no one can afford to rest on one’s laurels but needs a continuous learning culture. Another important fact being seen is that non-tech firms are increasingly emerging as the source of information technology roles; for example automotive, aerospace, BFSI, telecom, retail, healthcare, etc,” commented R Chandrashekhar, president, NASSCOM.

Commenting on the need to incentivise labour-intensive-industries, Arunkumar Pillai, partner - Skill Development, GPS, EY, said, “Today, there is pressing need to incentivise industries that are manpower intensive and have high employment elasticity. Leveraging the window available in the next three years will enable the government to undertake large scale reforms in the education and training sector to ensure that the supply of an Industry 4.0 compliant workforce is readily available.”