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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.
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.
I requested G section and when it was granted, G section put me onto training straight away for my new position;
I love it how these economic-sounding pronouncements about worker obsolescence make it sound like merely a bureaucratic operation plus a dash of worker initiative and the jobs problem is solved.
I like economics, but I'm increasingly convinced that economists are mostly the ecclesiastical division of the capitalist class. Their role is to endorse greed and dislocation of workers as necessary and good works and rebuke critics who question the outcome.
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.
At the very least, there will apparently always be jobs writing about how automation is going to put everyone out of a job.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
As a life long fiscal conservative, I'd suggest you do some reading on UBI before spouting off. I'll admit that I had a similar kneejerk reaction when I first heard about it. I now see it as inevitable with the future of automation and AI. UBI doesn't mean you need to stop working, and testing in various locations has already shown that people generally like to remain active in some kind of work. Typically, UBI doesn't cover enough for much in the way of non-necessities...you couldn't afford a vacation w/o additional income. fivethirtyeight.com did an excellent article if you could be bothered to read up on it.
Just another day in Paradise
https://www.mckinsey.com/globa...
The 5 MB PDF:
https://www.mckinsey.com/~/med...
A thought experiment. In a nation of 330 million, if there are only 150 million jobs, are the unemployed freeloaders? Really think about it before you answer.
The new thing that's happening is that here soon, production will massively outpace labor. It's a new state of affairs that human beings haven't seen yet. There isn't an -ism to describe it accurately. It wouldn't be capitalism or communism, both are predicated on scarcity. Given a limited amount of valuable goods, how best to equitably distribute them? Remove the "limited" from the equation and they suddenly don't apply.
So what would you do if that were the case? Let's say that automation does eliminate half the jobs in America. There simply isn't anything for you to do. What would you do? Would you hold to your "argh it looks like socialism so it is bad" philosophy and not accept UBI? Would you starve before giving in?
Because it is coming, you know. And it doesn't have jack shit to do with any political left/right point of view. Right now it's pure capitalism driving this. As soon as UPS is able to replace 100,000 drivers with an average salary of 75,000 a year with computers - it will. The competitive advantage it would gain would be 7.5 billion in saved revenue. Think they won't do that?
And every other industry that can, will. If UPS does it, FedEx will have to if they wish to remain competitive. And so on.
What will you do then?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.