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375 Million Jobs May Be Automated By 2030, Study Suggests (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNNMoney: The McKinsey Global Institute cautions that as many as 375 million workers will need to switch occupational categories by 2030 due to automation. The work most at risk of automation includes physical jobs in predictable environments, such as operating machinery or preparing fast food. Data collection and processing is also in the crosshairs, with implications for mortgage origination, paralegals, accounts and back-office processing. To remain viable, workers must embrace retraining in different fields. But governments and companies will need to help smooth what could be a rocky transition.
Despite the looming challenges, the report revealed how workers can move forward. While the introduction of the personal computer in the 1980s eliminated some jobs, it created many more roles. Workers who are willing to develop new skills should be able to find new jobs. The authors don't expect automation will displace jobs involving managing people, social interactions or applying expertise. Gardeners, plumbers, child and elder-care workers are among those facing less risk from automation. The report says that 39 million to 73 million jobs in the U.S. could be destroyed, but about 20 million of those displaced workers can be shifted fairly easily into similar occupations. Globally, up to 800 million workers could be displaced.
Despite the looming challenges, the report revealed how workers can move forward. While the introduction of the personal computer in the 1980s eliminated some jobs, it created many more roles. Workers who are willing to develop new skills should be able to find new jobs. The authors don't expect automation will displace jobs involving managing people, social interactions or applying expertise. Gardeners, plumbers, child and elder-care workers are among those facing less risk from automation. The report says that 39 million to 73 million jobs in the U.S. could be destroyed, but about 20 million of those displaced workers can be shifted fairly easily into similar occupations. Globally, up to 800 million workers could be displaced.
The way we're going, by 2030 we may living in caves again.
Maybe we can mine for clean coal while we're there.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This seems to happen every 50 years or so. OMG technology will take our jobs. Oh wait it took jobs that we didn’t want to do and it created a new market for more jobs.
There use to be a job for the human computer who did calculations all day.
We get the electric computer that replaced that job. However this meant more businesses could afford these computer causing a rise of software developers who had more jobs then the human computer had.
Except for fighting the future, embrace it, it will mean you can be on the next big thing.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Exactly right.
Here's how it's going to go:
First they will come up with computing systems effective enough to do jobs that aren't tightly constrained. That's coming along right now; mostly in the nature of stacking of simple systems to gain stacked competencies.
The training for individual competencies is going on all around us right now. The difficult task of integrating them remains, and there are many more to go. But it is going.
Then, and only then, will the rush to build anthropomorphic chassis commence. Within just a few years (four or five at the most) of that – after all, it's a straight-forward engineering challenge, completely unlike the nature of putting the task competencies together – we'll be deluged by integrated systems that will be able to do just about anything we're able to do, job-wise.
The light at the end of the tunnel is definitely a train.
Our society will have to completely change the nature of what we expect from our citizens, and what we provide for them, and how we provide it. If we don't get that done in time, there's going to be a lot of blood on the tracks.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
One of these things is not like the others.
When you automate a few, or even all, sock factories, the workers can go make sweaters and underwear, etc. The economy as a whole doesn't make a radical shift. There's some hardship for a small number, but the flex is there.
When you automate everything, the workers won't have that option. The entire economy will shift. There won't be new jobs for workers – because just like the old jobs, general purpose systems will be able to do those as well. There will be no case for hiring a human for such jobs. None.
Unless you have some concrete proposal for the re-employment of the vast majority of the workforce, your vision remains on the highly unlikely side – McDonald's will not put a worker in place of a machine that costs much less and is more reliable; there's absolutely no business case for it. Neither will anyone else. In the present economic system, doing so is a straightforward invitation for competition to undercut your costs and overwhelm your competence.
These systems will be able to do all such jobs. The only question is just how sophisticated they will get... and betting that they won't get very sophisticated is a dubious bet. We're seeing higher levels of competence every day now, and there's no sign of it slowing down – quite the contrary, it's still accelerating.
A major social and economic shift will result. It could be very painful if we're not very quick on our feet. All of the "work ethic" inculcation people are driven by is going to turn from an advantage to a serious detriment in the space of just a few years.
You watch. Unless the whole machine learning sector drags to a halt (not looking that way at all, btw), this stuff is all inevitable. It's almost certain to cause an immense cultural and economic shock.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
it took 80 years for those jobs to materialize after the last big industrial revolution. During those 80 years we had wide spread poverty due to unemployment plus two world wars (and innumerable smaller conflicts). It was pretty much an all around shit time to be alive unless you were a member of the aristocracy.
So yeah, the ship will probably eventually right itself. After a lot of pointless misery that could be easily avoided if we just plain _tried_. Let me put it another way: unemployment and social unease due to widespread automation is a complex problem; and when, in anyone's life, has a complex problem been best addressed by ignoring it. And yes, you're entire post is suggesting we ignore it, even if you don't know that it does.
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What do these names have in common?
Smith, Potter, Taylor, Spinner, Weaver, Webster, Dyer, Thatcher, Tyler, Miller, Baker, Cheeseman, Spicer, Cook, Fisher, Carter, Clarke, Skinner
They are all common jobs that lots of people do, of course. Or were, 100 years ago. They've all pretty much been automated. Of course we could now list 50 jobs that are common today that didn't exist 100 years a good o. In fact, over half of the US workforce works in jobs that didn't exist 100 years ago.
Yes jobs will be automated, as has been the case since the 1600s. And what's happened for hundreds of years is that as people no longer need to pick cotton, they instead design UIs, or test apps, or maintain automated looks that produce thousands of dollars of fabric per hour. The increased productivity of maintaining the automated look instead of weaving by hand is why median real household income has increased by 500%.
Wrong. Because that 7.5 billion dollars is being EXTRACTED from the US economy. That 7.5 billion dollars used to pay for houses, gas, food, cars, and everything else those drivers needed for their daily life.
You are correct, of course. Replacing those workers would immediately return 7.5 billion to UPS, minus a percentage of people/customers newly unemployed that would no longer be able to afford their services. This is where UBI enters the conversation.
UBI is one answer, but I'm not convinced that it will really work. We've based our cultural values around being productive members of society.
Also correct. As it currently stands, a great deal of America bases a great deal of their personal self-image around their ability to hold a job. I will say this though - cultural values can change, and rapidly if they have to. A brief review of the last 100 years of German history can show that.
Is this the american dream? Nope. But I think we realistically need to be having these conversations well ahead of the time when we lay off 3.5 million truck drivers, ten times that many warehouse workers, half of all office workers, all legal clerks, etc., etc., etc. And those days are not that far away.
Bless you. You are the only other person who is worried about the same thing I'm worried about. This exactly. We are making exactly zero preparations for this. It's inevitable at this point and all of society is simply ignoring it. Don't tell me they don't want to replace 3.5 million truck drivers - they absolutely do. You don't make a R&D project like this one on a whim. I think the economy - just on trucking alone - could tank. Add to that all the other easily automated jobs and it's a disaster. And nobody is even talking about being prepared for it.
I'm not 100% sure UBI would be a fix either. Maybe another solution would be to have everyone retire at 35, and instead of calling it UBI we call it early pension. Or something. I don't know what would actually work either. But it's a problem we're going to have to solve, and soon.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.