Job losses by automation ‘worse than the 1980s’

Five times as many UK jobs are set to be eliminated through automation than were lost in the coal and steel industries in the 1980s, research has found, with the vast majority affecting working class communities.

New technology in robotics and artificial intelligence risk destroying up to 2.9 million working jobs in retail, transport and manufacturing, according to analysis by the House of Commons Library, with more than a million of those roles filled by the poorest 10 per cent of workers.

Labour MP Liam Byrne, part of the Red Shift group that commissioned the report, said the UK was “on course to make the same mistakes” as during the de-industrialisation of the 1980s. “Workers are clear: they want government to help them retrain”.