Have you heard...?

When I am working with my students, I try to use only evidenced data, and to check that data carefully. So when a student suggested in a class forum recently that: "A report by Dell Technologies stated, '85 per cent of the jobs that will exist in 2030 haven't even been invented yet' (SaLemi, 2018)" I was a bit puzzled. I had heard a "75%" factoid bandied around (and never fact-checked it, to my shame), but not an "85%" one. So I went looking, for my own satisfaction.

I managed to (a) find who made that claim - with the help of Newton (2018): it was the think-tank, Institute for the Future, who ran some sessions for Dell Technologies in 2017. The statement was made, as Newton (2018) relates:

"When asked for clarification on the 85% assertion in the report, Rachel Maguire, Research Director at IFF said, 'I cannot offer too much in the way of citation [....it was] offered up during a workshop'".

OK. The statement we use as evidence of this vast change in the world of work was "offered up during a workshop" (Newton, 2018). So if we turn to the report itself, from Dell and the IFTF, it says: 

"The experts that attended the IFTF workshop in March 2017 estimated that around 85% of the jobs that today’s learners will be doing in 2030 haven’t been invented yet. This makes the famous prediction that 65% of grade school kids from 1999 will end up in jobs that haven’t yet been created seem conservative in comparison" (Institute for the Future for Dell Technologies, 2017, p. 14).

What immediately caught my eye was the "65%" comment in the second sentence. If the 85% number was sniffy, here did the 65% stat come from? And why did it sound like one-upmanship, as well? We will take your 65% and raise you to 85%...?

Thanks to a number of dedicated researchers (Doxdator, 2017; Morimoto, 2018; Sander, 2017) I found a relatively early quote in a book, which said "65% of the children who are in pre-school today will work in jobs and careers that have yet to be defined" (Carroll, 2007, p. 62). However, this too appears to be total hokum, and was one of those debunking searches which just went deeper and deeper and deeper. Lots of researchers have had a crack at the 65%, and no-one has been able to get to the bottom of it: it appears to be 'person 1 based their data off person 2, who based it off person 3, who based it off person 1' circular situations (Doxdator, 2017; Morimoto, 2018; Sander, 2017).

This myth is so widespread as to be included in the World Economic Forum report presented at Davos (WEF, 2016, p. 3). Doxtdator (2017) tracked the claim back to 1957 without finding any evidence to support the "65%" statement. The BBC World Service podcast "More or Less" explored the source of the claim (Sander, 2017) and could not find what it was based on, and concluded that we probably need to be teaching our young people critical statistics as a key future skill. 

Crikey: can we trust nothing? Well, as it turns out, the 2018 WEF report statistics draw more carefully from substantiated work, saying that this report "reflects lessons learned from the design and execution of the original survey" (WEF, 2018, p. 4). Nice one, WEF. 

So let's not bandy about 65% or 85% of anything to do with educating our rangatahi without some fact-checking first, eh. 

Sam

References:

Carroll, J. (2007). Ready, set, done: How to innovate when faster is the new fast. Oblio Press.

Doxtdator, B. (2017, July 8). A Field Guide to ‘jobs that don’t exist yet’: The statistic you either love or hate. https://longviewoneducation.org/field-guide-jobs-dont-exist-yet/

Institute for the Future for Dell Technologies. (2017). The Next Era of Human-Machine Partnerships: Emerging technologies' impact on society and work in 2030 [report]. https://www.delltechnologies.com/content/dam/delltechnologies/assets/perspectives/2030/pdf/SR1940_IFTFforDellTechnologies_Human-Machine_070517_readerhigh-res.pdf

Morimoto, R. (2018). 65% of Future Jobs Not Invented Yet” – A Claim with Unsupported Data (Updated Dec/2019). Rands Blog. http://randsnet.blogspot.com/2018/02/65-of-future-jobs-not-invented-yet.html

Newton, D. (2018, December 28). The Myth Of Jobs That Don't Exist Yet. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereknewton/2018/12/28/the-myth-of-jobs-that-dont-exist-yet/?sh=2f7ea2e470ec

SaLemi, L. (2018, October 29). 85% of Jobs that will exist in 2030 haven't been invented yet.  Linkedin. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/85-jobs-exist-2030-havent-been-invented-yet-leo-salemi/

Sander, H. (Producer) (2017, May 30). More or Less: Have 65% of Future Jobs Not Yet Been Invented? [podcast]. BBC World Service. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p053ln9f

WEF. (2016). The Future of Jobs: Employment, Skills and Workforce Strategy for the Fourth Industrial Revolution [report]. Word Economic Forum. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs.pdf

WEF. (2018). The Future of Jobs: Centre for the New Economy and Society [report]. Word Economic Forum. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2018.pdf