#HTE

What’s the Likelihood That Your Job Will Be Automated in the Future?

Early last year, we came across a video that broke down generally which types of jobs would be in danger with the adoption of automation in the workforce, and it primarily told us that all repetitive blue collar jobs were at risk. Yesterday, the Telegraph released a comprehensive list of jobs that were most likely to be computerised with percentage probabilities, and to be frank, it’s a bit more shocking to look at the job titles at risk on an individual level. Here’s a list within the article of the 12 jobs with a whopping 99% chance of being automated in the future: 

- Data Entry Keyers
- Library Technicians
- New Accounts Clerks
- Photographic Process Workers and Processing Machine Operators
- Tax Preparers
- Cargo and Freight Agents
- Watch Repairers
- Insurance Underwriters
- Mathematical Technicians
- Sewers, Hand
- Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers
- Telemarketers

The jobs least likely to be automated were as follows:

- Recreational Therapists
- First-Line Supervisors of Mechanics, Installers, and Repairers
- Emergency Management Directors
- Mental Health and Substance Abuse Social Workers
- Audiologists
- Occupational Therapists
- Orthotists and Prosthetists
- Healthcare Social Workers

A full, searchable list of over 700 jobs at risk of automation is available within the Telegraph article, which I recommend checking out. Interestingly, jobs like modelmaking or milling & planing setters both have a 96-98% chance of automation replacement, graphic designers an 8.2% chance, while industrial designers are still incredibly low at 3.7% (so designers, you’re still safe for now). 

Another interesting aspect of this article is how it described low-skill workers jobs evolving in the future, a group most at risk in the automation switchover. The solution, the original study concludes, has to do with these workers acquiring creative skills:

“Our model predicts a truncation in the current trend towards labour market polarisation, with computerisation being principally confined to low-skill and low-wage occupations.

Our findings thus imply that as technology races ahead, low-skill workers will reallocate to tasks that are non-susceptible to computerisation - i.e., tasks requiring creative and social intelligence. For workers to win the race, however, they will have to acquire creative and social skills.”

In this scenario, the possibility for these low-skill workers to acquire the skills to thrive in a largely automated economy seems to lie in better vocational training programs in and outside the workplace around the world with a focus on critical thinking and problem solving.