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Domain: ons.gov.uk
Stories and comments across the archive that link to ons.gov.uk.
Stories · 2
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Automation Threatens 1.5 Million Workers In Britain, Says ONS (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: About 1.5 million workers in Britain are at high risk of losing their jobs to automation, according to government estimates, with women and those in part-time work most affected. Supermarket checkout assistants have already borne the brunt of the phenomenon, the Office for National Statistics found, with 25.3% of jobs disappearing between 2011 and 2017. Other jobs where automation has taken its toll include laundry workers, farm workers and tyre fitters, among which numbers have dropped by 15% or more, said the ONS, as machines have replaced labor.
Women are most likely to lose out, said the ONS. "The analysis showed a higher proportion of roles currently filled by women are at risk of automation; in 2017, 70.2% of high-risk jobs were held by women." It named Tamworth, Rutland and South Holland in Lincolnshire as the areas most exposed to automation -- partly reflecting a relatively high level of farm workers -- while Camden in north London has the workers least at risk. But the ONS analysis also found many workers -- especially those in their mid to late 30s and who work in London and the south-east -- have little to fear from the rise of the robots. Those with higher levels of education appear to be better protected. "The ONS said that, of the jobs at risk, 39% were held by people whose educational attainment level was GCSE or below, while 1.2% were held by those who had been through higher education or university," the report says. -
Number of Workers in Jobs That Can Be Automated Falls (ft.com)
Employment has fallen in jobs that can be easily automated and risen in those which are trickier for robots, damping hopes that higher minimum wages could unleash a wave of investment in automation. From a report: Statistics from the Office for National Statistics published on Monday showed that in 2011 about 8.1 per cent of workers were in jobs with a "high" risk of automation, but by 2017 that had fallen to 7.4 per cent. [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source and original study.] The ONS report highlighted that fewer workers remain in areas that can be easily automated, such as dry cleaning and laundry jobs, which fell by 28 per cent between 2011 and 2017, and retail cashier work, which fell by 25.3 per cent over the same period.
Since the financial crisis the UK has enjoyed rapid growth in employment combined with one of the lowest rates of investment spending of any large rich country. Many economists have suggested that hiring cheap labour instead of investment in new techniques is behind the country's weak rate of productivity growth. Policymakers had hoped that increasing the minimum wage would spur companies to replace low-paid jobs with machines, in turn boosting growth in productivity. [...] But the ONS analysis suggests the increase in employment over the past decade has not come from jobs that could easily be done by machines. Instead, since 2011 the UK lost jobs with a high or medium risk of automation, like shelf fillers, but gained them in areas with a low risk, such as physiotherapy.