If the Monday a.m. blues got you down, this piece might not help.
According to this report from BBC Tech, the jobs at greatest risk of automation in the near future include taxi drivers, factory workers and office workers “who do repetitive jobs such as writing reports or drawing up spreadsheets [that] are easily replaced with software.”
“Boston Consulting Group predicts that by 2025, up to a quarter of jobs will be replaced by either smart software or robots, while a study from Oxford University has suggested that 35% of existing UK jobs are at risk of automation in the next 20 years,” reports the BBC.
BBC Tech reports that China’s factory workforce will be greatly impacted. Here’s an example: “Foxconn, maker of electronic devices such as Apple’s iPhone, also plans a robot army although its ambitions are slightly more modest — aiming for a 30% robot workforce in the next five years.”
Other highly probable areas for automation include bartenders and servers, which we’ve reported on here. And fully automated Amazon fulfillment centers are also seen on the horizon, according to our report about New York Times reporter John Markoff’s new book about the history and future of artificial intelligence.
You can read the full report from the Oxford researchers here. They took into account nine skills when assessing how easily a job could be automated, including “social perceptiveness, negotiation, persuasion, assisting and caring for others, originality, fine arts, finger dexterity, manual dexterity and the need to work in a cramped work space.”
The jobs that fared the best? Psychologists, social workers and nurses — anything that requires empathy and communication — are secure, along with roles that require a great deal of problem-solving and creativity, like engineers, designers and artists. Also fairly safe? Jobs that require social intelligence and negotiating skills.
They have also set up a neat chart that shows you the likelihood that your gig will be gone in the next decade. Simply put your job into the field to see the results. Of course, some jobs will still exist, but will also have to evolve (aka “journalist”). See below:
All told, it’s a good heads up to alter your career path if you see your head on the chopping block.
