How countries are using AI to track employment

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a powerful technology that has transformed many businesses and jobs. And with the amount of data in the employment industry, organisations and even governments are beginning to make use of the technology to match jobs and even track illegal hiring.

And with the employment market and trends going through constant changes with the rise of the gig economy and freelancers, there’s an increasing need to utilise technology to keep pace with the changes.

Let’s take a look at how some countries are utilizing AI to do so.

1) Recommend jobs

Estonia is leading the way in using AI for recruitment and employment. The government is making use of algorithm to profile candidates and “give a recommendation of where you could go next”, the country’s Chief Data Officer Ott Velsberg told GovInsider. “We could, in theory, give a heads up to you and say that you should perhaps choose another one,” he said. It can also predict what kind of jobs are in danger of redundancy. He also added that around 72% of candidates who joined new jobs through the AI system were still employed six months later, compared to 58% of those advised by officials.

2) Monitor fraud and illegal hires

Besides using AI to match jobs, governments are also using the technology to detect and track illegal hires. Singapore is using data to track the risk of employees and employers trying to break labour laws.

“Using advanced data science and machine learning on large, diverse sets of employment, business and transactional data, MOM developed agile analytics models to detect patterns and emerging risks for which early interventions in policy and regulations could be implemented,” a Ministry of Manpower (MOM) spokesperson told GovInsider.

“With tighter controls, more people would try to circumvent the system. With better use of data, MOM has achieved significantly higher detection rates and greater enforcement presence in a resource lean manner. For one exercise, we saved about 20,000 man-hours but covered 650 more cases,” the Ministry added.

3) International migration and future skills

Another way that AI can be used is to analyse migration and skills trends. One example is how the United Nations Development Programme’s Regional Innovation Centre for Asia Pacific has used publicly available LinkedIn data to identify labour migration patterns to and from Thailand.

It analysed data in Thailand and found out that Thailand attracted most people to jobs in international affairs, renewables, and sports while defence, space and maritime lost the most jobs to employees migrating out of Thailand.

Between 2015 and 2018, the biggest changes in labour migration came to and from Thailand were in the US, France and Myanmar. The LinkedIn data also showed that soft skills like time management, problem solving, negotiation and leadership are on the rise in Thailand.