Millennials are not robot-proof

About half of millennials looking for work are interested in jobs that carry a risk of automation, a new study suggests. The findings indicate the youngest and most educated generation in the American workforce isn’t necessarily more robot-proof than older workers, who tend to be portrayed as the primary victims of automation.

“Millennials show a considerable amount of interest in occupations that face a threat of automation,” said Daniel Culbertson, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, the research

institute attached to the international job site, and the author of the report.

“That gets lost when people talk about millennials being so highly educated and more interested in tech roles.”

A college degree doesn’t protect against robot rivals because even well-paid, highly skilled jobs could shrink or vanish in the near future, he said. Recent graduates who land high salaries aren’t impervious if their job is characterized by repetitive tasks and decisions.

Work that involves heavy routine, Culbertson said, is most susceptible to automation. Computers can master extremely complex patterns.

Job security, some economists theorize, lies in roles that require an

understanding of something less predictable: human behavior. Think management, medical and creative roles.

Culbertson wanted to better understand the employment risk each generation faces from automation, so he turned to clicks at Indeed. The site attracts an average of 200 million unique monthly visitors.

He divided six months of job searches by generation, based on resume data, into four groups: skilled jobs (routine or not) and manual labor (repetitive or not).

Over half, 51.2 percent, of baby boomers (characterized here as 53 to 71) were drawn to routine-heavy or “automation-prone” openings. But millennials (20 to 36) were close behind: 49.8 percent were attracted to such work. Among Gen Xers (37 to 52), the figure was slightly lower at 49 percent.