Half the Work People Do Can Be Automated, Says McKinsey (techinasia.com)

Half the work people do in their jobs can be automated, according to a study published by McKinsey Global Institute. From a report: Instead of assessing the impact of automation on specific jobs, the study went to a more granular level by looking at the activities involved in various jobs. The logic is that every occupation has a range of activities, each with varying potential for automation. McKinsey found that 49 percent of the activities people are paid to do in the global economy can be automated with "currently demonstrated technology." That involves US$11.9 trillion in wages and touches 1.1 billion people. The study encompassed over 50 countries and 80 percent of the world's workers. China, India, Japan, and the US accounted for half of the total wages and employees. Not surprisingly, the two most populous countries, China and India, could see the largest impact of automation, potentially affecting 600 million workers -- which is twice the population of the US.

Comments

Threshold

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the unemployment threshold going to be?
When unemployment caused by automation, robotics, etc reaches 10%?
15%...
20%..?

In the coming decades more and more people worldwide will become unemployable, and they will have nothing to do or any way to make a living?

How are governments and communities going to respond?

Re:Threshold

[Lije Baley]

Go watch some of those thoughtful dystopian movies they used to make. It has all been well foreseen and described.

Re:Threshold

[serviscope_minor]

You're assuming that people won't find a different job their current job is automated.

You're assuming they will. It didn't happen with the industrial revolution. Their grandkids found other jobs, but for a lot of displaced agricultural workers it meant grinding poverty.

IOW it may or may not happen. You don't know and there's historical precident in both directions.

Re:Threshold

[bluefoxlucid]

90% of the workforce was farmers in 1870. It's 2% now, with a total of about 10% of all work supporting that (chemists, GMO, shipping, irrigation, fuel for all this shit...).

Economic growth is basically either "we have more people, so we make more stuff, because more people work more" or "we figured out how to use the same people to make the same shit in half the time, so we made twice as much shit." Wages essentially represent time.

So?

[lucaiaco]

A stupid article. Almost everything can be automated, the crucial question is whether it is cost-effective to do so. It is not surprising that a lot of the activities that can be automated concerns workers in China and India, because in most cases, it's simply more convenient not to replace an $2/h organic automaton with a robot.

Here is your anecdote. A friend of mine was working on the manufacture industry. They had a branch in India, and his role was to mentor the product manager of the Indian factory. For a long time, he insisted that the factory in India bought this expensive machinery that they had been used in the Arizona for their production. The factory in India refused to do so by showing that paying 10 people to do the same job, for 100 years, would still be cheaper than actually buying the machinery.

Moral of the story: stupid article, move on.

McKinsey

[Pascal Sartoretti]

And 90% of McKinsey jobs can be automated with a good bullshit generator

Re:Sure.. my job can be automated

[Imazalil]

Maybe it will be management that will be automated and for once we can all receive clear, though out, complete, realistic specs. /ha ha who am I kidding.

Re:s/half/all/g

[arth1]

I for one would welcome a robot doing half of my work. That would be the half of my work that consists of meetings.