A whole new area of opportunity is evolving around internet business but does it offer extra jobs or replace others in a more customary setting? Reports continue to circulate about the increase in the Online Jobs market and how it will have a positive impact on the number of unemployed in the UK over the next couple of years. On the face of it this would seem to be correct.
Organisations are springing up at a great rate taking advantage of the massive demand in online shopping from individual things for personal use such as presents, household appliances, clothing and books to the business to business type trade where larger scale trading occurs. We can also see the growth of existing companies who have realised the online opportunities and have expanded their offering, moving into online sales and therefore widening their audience massively. Both of these scenarios will mean an rise in employee numbers whether they Work From Home or in the office or factory.
Certainly in the short term this will trim the jobless figures as existing roles are maintained and people are recruited into the new situations created and developed by the organisation from this thrilling new source. On top of the sales processing or customer service roles there will also be increases in back room roles such as personnel, finance departments and of course in manufacturing areas. As demand on each particular business increases due to their successful internet promotion virtually all areas of the company will need to grow. The company will also need to cope with larger distribution, banking and accountancy requirements meaning that there will be increased demand on external organizations servicing the growing business.
However at some point, maybe after the euphoria brought on by the striking increase in sales has settled, the business will need to reevaluate all of it’s sections. It may be that this takes a while to occur, however in the most perceptive companies they may already be anticipating drops in other sales areas. The organisation may at that point see that areas such as high street sales have been negatively affected by the move towards internet marketing and it may be decided that it is no longer worth being active in those areas.
So eventually we could see simply a shift in the sales arena, from the more conventional sorts such as high street shops and catalogue chains to the newer and more successful Internet Business. Jobs will be lost in the old sectors as high street shop profits reduce and organizations see a much better return on investment from their e-commerce activities. The workforce in these shrinking markets will reduce and we could end up with a jobless figure that is larger than the current one.
Of course, it’s by no means sure that there will be a rise in job seekers as a result of these trends. History from the start of the industrial revolution shows us that these sorts of developments make society as a whole richer over time. A percentage of the workers losing their jobs will set up new micro businesses, and taking advantage of the changes which caused their owners to lose their jobs in the first place, enough of these businesses will expand into important employers in their own right. Thereby employing those whose jobs disappeared at the beginning of the trend.
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