A totally new area of opportunity is evolving around internet business but does it provide additional jobs or replace others in a more customary setting? Reports continue to appear about the increase in the Online Jobs market and how it will have a positive impact on the number of people out of work in the UK over the next couple of years. On the surface of it this would seem to be true.

Firms are appearing at a great rate taking advantage of the big demand in online shopping from individual items for personal use such as presents, household equipment, clothing and books to the business to business type trade where larger scale trading is conducted. We can also see the expansion of existing companies who have realised the online opportunities and have expanded their offering, moving into online sales and therefore widening their audience hugely. Both of these scenarios will mean an increase in employee numbers whether they Work From Home or in the office or factory.

Certainly in the short term this will lower the jobless figures as existing roles are maintained and people are recruited into the new roles created and developed by the organisation from this exciting new source. On top of the sales processing or customer service positions there will also be increases in support roles such as personnel, finance departments and of course in production areas. As demand on each particular business increases due to their successful internet advertising virtually all areas of the firm 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 peripheral organizations servicing the growing business.

However at some point, presumably after the exhilaration brought on by the dramatic increase in sales has faded, the business will need to reevaluate all of it’s sectors. It may be that this takes a while to happen, however in the most smart companies they may already be anticipating falls 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 business and it may be decided that it is no longer worth working in those areas.

So sooner or later we could see simply a shift in the sales arena, from the more traditional kinds such as high street shops and catalogue chains to the newer and more successful Internet Business. Jobs will vanish in the old sectors as high street shop profits plumet 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 existing one.

Of course, it’s by no means sure that there will be a rise in joblessness as a result of these trends. History from the dawn of the industrial revolution teaches us that these sorts of efficiencies make society as a whole richer over time. A proportion of the people losing their jobs will start 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 firms will develop into significant employers in their own right. Thereby offrering work to those whose jobs were lost at the beginning of the trend.