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.

Comments

Ob Douglas Adams quote

[DrYak]

Quick rule of thumb:
1. All automation in the past was GOOD.
2. All automation in the future will be BAD.
The is what the public has believed for at least three centuries.

To quote Douglas Adams:

1. everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
2. anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
3. anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

Re:bully balls

[Freischutz]

Firing supermarket checkout assistants and installing self-checkout lanes that force customers to do the work is not automation, its fuck the consumer business as usual.

Before Woolworths opened the first "department store" in the 1880s, customers would enter the store, hand their list to a clerk, who would then go back into the "store" and retrieve the items. It was quite a revolution to allow the customers to go into the "store" area and select their own items.

So instead of whining about the check-outs, you should be outraged that you have to walk into the store at all. Why should you do the clerk's job?

I will whine about self checkouts all I want. They don't work all that well, they keep setting off the alarm because I wasn't quick enough put 10 cans of soda onto the scales so they sound off an alarm because they have falsely determined I'm somehow trying to cheat the store and every time I buy a heavy duty cleaning chemical an energy drink or a packet of pipe tobacco for my dad the damn things call for a store employee to verify that I'm older than 16. I'm almost 7 feet tall, I'm built like Shrek the Ogre and I have a long black beard all the way down to my chest, a supermarket teller does not mistake me for a 16 year old and finishes the check-out procedure much faster.