Ejercicio A.3 · Inglés PAU Madrid Modelo 2022

TEXTO A

The Future of Jobs and Skills

Students entering formal education today will be making decisions about their career by 2030, so the future of jobs and skills is a key issue in education. Many people seem to know what the future will be: Robots will take our jobs.

Nowadays, anxiety about workers being replaced by robots is increasing, although fear of automation and technologically-driven unemployment have arisen throughout the centuries, usually provoked by a disruption, like the Industrial Revolution. Nevertheless, historically, technology has created more jobs than it has destroyed. We don't know if it will be different this time, but we know that automation is only part of the story.

Equally important are other related trends including demographics, urbanization, globalization, inequality, political uncertainty, and climate change. For instance, urbanization and globalization are trends that interact with climate change and drive the green sector. Currently the green economy is creating new jobs faster than jobs are disappearing in the polluting sectors. Understanding how these trends interact is critical to understanding the jobs and skills needed in the future.

Recent studies have found out that 70% of workers are in jobs with uncertain future, and this must be improved with the right skills preparation. For instance, in the US there is strong emphasis on interpersonal skills – teaching, social perceptiveness, service orientation, and persuasion – and higher-order cognitive skills such as complex problem solving, originality, and active learning. Besides, occupations must be re-designed to pair uniquely human skills with the productivity gains from technology. For example, while robots will be able to build bridges and diagnose diseases, humans will retain the unique ability to engineer a bridge and care for a sick child. How we balance those skills with technology productivity will determine the course of our workforce.

Adapted from “The Future of Skills,” Pearson Future Skills Research, November 21, 2020. <https://futureskills.pearson.com/research/#homescreen>

A.3.- Find the words in the text that mean: (Puntuación máxima: 1 punto)

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b)

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