IT will continue to drive job growth
IT will continue to drive job growth
Apr 18, 2005: Despite computers being useful for so many jobs that traditionally used to be carried out by humans, these machines are not good enough substitutes yet to completely leave nothing else left for people, according to a recent Gartner Fellows Interview.
Professor Eric Brynjolfsson, a research analyst for Gartner said that information technology will continue to contribute to gains in productivity and long-term job growth, despite near-term disruptions to job creation.
He added that although there are cases where companies have not needed as many workers, because technology has been able to do their job for them, they have lost out on output because of this.
"There are plenty of jobs that people are better than computers at. So we can have both. Ultimately, I'm optimistic about productivity growth being at the high end of economists' estimates. But it's not necessarily going to be a smooth and steady path."
Brynjolfsson believes that effective policies to support economic growth are key ingredients for continued growth.
Productivity growth has averaged at four percent a year since 2000, compared to 1 percent between 1973 and 1995. Brynjolfsson believes that there is now reason why high productivity gains and high levels of employment cannot continue.
"In my research, nine-tenths of the costs and nine-tenths of the benefits of big IT projects are not in computer hardware or even software. They're in the organisational and human capital changes for creating business process change.
"Those are the ones that tend to be the roadblocks to success or the ones that allow you to really do things differently."
The Gartner Fellows consists of 15 Gartner research analysts who are considered to be distinguished by their reputations as innovators and thought leaders.
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