Robots are still coming for our jobs Other studies, other predictions
We all want to know how many jobs will be threatened by the rise of robots and technology. You might feel vulnerable if your job is one that could be affected.
But thanks to a new report, 27 per cent of the 160 million people in the United States labour force can breathe easier knowing their jobs are safer than they thought.
That’s 43 million living, breathing and working people in America. By extension, that’s 3 million Australians, 9 million Brits and 27 per cent of most advanced economy workforces.
Their prospects have been re-rated in new work by a group that includes one of the mathematicians who first raised the alarm on the risk to employment.The Future of Skills: Employment in 2030, published in September, is their most detailed investigation to date on the impact of technology and it now puts 20 per cent of workers in the vulnerable category.
That’s down from the 47 per cent cited as at risk in a 2013 study, The Future of Employment, by professors Karl Frey and Michael Osborne of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford in the UK. Many studies have since mirrored this finding. The original Frey/Osborne study focused on American labour force data. Their follow-up work reached similar conclusions for Britain and Europe.
The Committee for the Economic Development of Australia did similar work in a 2015 report Australia’s Future Workforce to reach a figure of 40 per cent.
This has been the basis for employment projections by both the CSIRO’s Data61 and the Foundation for Younger Australians.
It’s also underpinned the rising cry for a basic income to compensate the millions of people who risk losing work while machines create greater productivity.