Disappearing professions through technological development: Implications for the Dutch labour market

Frey and Osborne (2013) have researched the effects of current digitization and robotization of society and concluded 47 percent of American jobs have a high probability of disappearing between now and the year 2030. There are signs that these technological developments may lead to a fourth industrial revolution and consequently, unemployment will rise, as job creation cannot keep up with job destruction. The previous Deputy Prime minister of the Netherlands underlined the necessity of dealing with the possible changes of technological development for the Netherlands (Buddingh, 2014). A quantitative database-driven approach is used to determine a labour market forecast for the Netherlands. The programming language ‘Python’ was used to conduct the research. The research concludes in a policy space with three technological development scenarios and a generalized methodology. The development scenarios are low, medium, and high technological development. The research concludes in respectively 0.8, 2.6 and 4.7 million loss of jobs for the scenarios. The loss of jobs should be regarded as a space for policy since it does not incorporate the creation of new occupations. It is recommended to the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employed to instate a committee that addresses the sketched scenarios and designs policy to mitigate possible negative effects.