According to some estimates, the average Australian will change their career five to seven times in their professional life. This is expected to rise as new technologies automate labor and production moves abroad.It is not a new phenomenon for jobs to disappear. Have you ever seen an elevator operator? But the pace of change is increasing, and it could lead to large numbers of workers being unemployed or unemployed.While new technologies can create new jobs, the skills required for these jobs are not always the same as those in the older jobs. Moving between jobs requires you to make the most of your existing skills and learn new ones. However, these transitions can be difficult if there is too much gap between the old and the new skills.Our system recommends career changes. We used machine learning to analyze over 8 million job postings online to determine which moves are most likely to succeed. These details are available in PLOS One.The system begins by comparing the skills required for each occupation. An accountant might become a financial analyst, while a speech therapist may find it more difficult to become a finance analyst, as their skill sets are very different.Next, we examined a wide range of real-world career transitions in order to determine which way these transitions typically go. We found that accountants are more likely than vice versa to become financial analysts.Finally, our system will recommend a career move that is likely to succeed. It will also tell you what skills are required to make it work.Compare the similarities between occupationsOur system uses an economic measure called "revealed comparative advantages" (RCA). It is used to determine how important a person's skills are to a job. This was done using online job advertisements from 2018.Below is a map that shows the similarities between the top 500 skills. Each marker is a skill that has been colored according to one of the 13 clusters of skills.(Dawson et al., PLOS One, 2021)Above: Comparison of the top 500 skills listed in Australian job advertisements in 2018. High-skilled skills are clustered together.Knowing how similar skills are allows us to estimate the similarity of different professions based on the skills needed. Below is an illustration of the similarities between Australian occupations in 2018.Each marker represents an occupation. The colors indicate the level of automation risk for each occupation over the next 20 years (blue indicates low risk, red indicates high risk).Visibly similar occupations are often grouped together. Highly skilled and medical occupations have the lowest risk of automation.(Dawson et al., PLOS One, 2021)Above: A comparison of occupations colored by technological automation riskMapping transitionsThen, we combined our measure of similarity among occupations with a variety of labor market variables such as education requirements and employment levels to create our job transition recommendation system.Our system uses machine-learning techniques to "learn from" real job transitions and predict future job movements. It achieves high accuracy of 76 percent and also accounts for the asymmetries that occur between job transitions.The system's ability to predict whether a job transition will occur is a measure of performance.Although the full map of transitions is complex and large, you can still see how it works in this simplified version. It only covers transitions between 20 occupations. The map shows the "source" occupation on the horizontal axis, and the "target", occupation on the vertical.The column of squares at the bottom shows how likely it is that a particular occupation will be replaced by the one at the right.The probability of completing the transition is higher if the square is darker.(Dawson et al., PLOS One, 2021)Above: A small section of the Transitions Map, featuring 20 occupations.Artificial intelligence-powered job suggestionsSometimes, a new career requires new skills. But which skills? These skills can be identified by our system. Let's look at the system for domestic cleaners, an occupation whose employment has declined significantly since COVID-19 in Australia.(Dawson et al., PLOS One, 2021)Above: The Job Transitions Recommender system for 'Domestic cleaners', a non-essential occupation that suffered significant declines in Australia's COVID-19 epidemic.To find out which occupations are easiest to transition to, first we use the transitionsmap. The colors indicate which occupations can be continued during lockdown. Blue occupations are essential and can continue to function during crisis. Red occupations are non-essential.The flow diagram on the right (bottom half) shows the top-recommended occupations. These are sorted by transition probability in descending order.The diagram's width shows how many openings are available for each occupation. The segments colors indicate whether there has been an increase or decrease in demand compared to the same period in 2019 (pre-COVID).The six first transition recommendations are "non-essential" and have seen a decrease in demand. The seventh service, "aged and disabled carers", is considered "essential" and saw a significant increase in demand at the start of COVID-19.Because you have better chances of finding work if your occupation is in high demand, we choose "aged and disabled carer" for this example.What skills do you need to acquire for new jobs?Our system can also suggest skills workers should develop in order to improve their chances of success during a transition. Our argument is that workers should focus on the skills that are most relevant to their new occupation and those that are the most different than the skills they already have.The best skills for a domestic cleaner are those that can help with patient care, such as patient hygiene assistance.However, you don't need to learn unimportant skills or skills that are very similar to your current job. Skill sets such as "finance" and "business analysis" are not important for "aged and disabled caregivers" so they shouldn't be prioritized.Similar skills like "ironing" or "laundry" will be required for this new job, but it is possible that a "domestic cleanser" already has these skills (or can easily learn them).Smoother job transitions are a benefitAlthough the future of work is uncertain, it is certain that there will be changes. Workers will need to change jobs due to new technologies, economic crises, or other factors.Effective labour transitions will result in significant productivity and equity gains for all. Failure to transition quickly or efficiently will result in significant losses for the state, the individuals, and society as a whole. These methods and systems could greatly improve your chances of achieving these goals.Thank you to Davor Miskulin and Bledi Taska from Burning Glass Technologies, who generously provided the data and feedback for this research. Stijn Broecke, as well as other colleagues from OECD, provided valuable input and guidance during the development of this research.Nik Dawson, University of Technology Sydney Honorary Scholar; Marian-Andrei Rizoiu Lecturer in Computer Science University of Technology Sydney and Mary-Anne Williams, Mary-Anne Williams Chair in Innovation, UNSW.This article was republished by The Conversation under Creative Commons. You can read the original article.
