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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.
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.
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.
Do these 'reports' in these 'newspapers' actually have any real credibility, or are they as full of shit as I think they are?
For fuck's sake people, every time there's a technological breakthrough of some sort human civilization has gone through this shit, and it's always temporary.
Humans by definition cannot become obsolete we are the tool makers and tool users the tools do not make us obsolete we make the TOOLS obsolete.
Seriously people need to get a grip, and the FUD spreaders need to have their shit slapped until they learn to SHUT THE FUCK UP.
No worries. We'll employ them writing articles about how robots are going to take all our jobs away.
Half can do that, and the other half can write about economic fallacies.
If automation really caused job losses and impoverishment, Western Civilization would have collapsed in the 1800s, and countries like Ethiopia and Afghanistan that wisely avoided the "productivity catastrophe" would dominate the world.
Problem isn't so much about the total economic output, but rather the distribution of the wealth. Those without a job would also like a piece of the pie.
Automation has been a thing since Marc Brunel automated pulley block production in 1802. Henry Ford's massive increase in automation made cars so much cheaper that employment increased. Automation does not replace people. It increases productivity.
But it should replace people. After 200 years of automation, I'm still working an 8 hour day. why? Why can't we cut our hours down. Split every job in two, and let people do a 20 hour week. We have the technology. Why are we still selling hours of our lives to faceless corporations?
Back in the olden days (the 1970's) I actually wrote an essay about this phenomena. It was a huge fear among typesetters back then that computers were making them obsolete, and sure enough - that profession is all but gone today. The fear was that all jobs would be automated, making everybody unemployed.
It's easy to generalize from typesetters to everybody, but then - as now - people didn't (or couldn't) think on. Because we're not all unemployed today. Quite the opposite! - Here in Denmark we're at the highest employment level ever. Never before in history there was this many people with jobs, both in numbers and in percentage of the population. There are still people without jobs, but fewer and fewer.
What happened? - Exactly what I said back then: Automation generates a lot of new jobs because somebody has to invent, design, build and maintain the machines. The machines also create new needs and new opportunities. A lot of other new stuff gets invented all the time, and things change. Nobody in the 1970's could have predicted that 'influencers' (on social media) would be a thing, or even that there would be 'social media' with all that entails (servers, data centers, power supply, cooling, support, monitoring, security etc.). The funny thing is that this constant change has always been there. There were no mechanics until the combustion engine was invented. There were no librarians until the printed book was invented. There were no carpenters until we leaned to work with wood. At the same time most blacksmiths went out of business when horses were replaced with horsepower in engines, and video rental went out of business when streaming came along. Times change but so far we've always been able to fill the void with new jobs serving a new era. I don't see any reason that this will ever stop.
Yes, it means that people will have to find new jobs in new professions when their old one goes obsolete, but then again - it has always been like that.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Define essential.
If it is just to survive, people have done that in caves, so unless you are a hunter, you are NOT really essential? A doctor? Not essential, because the human race will survive without them. Just produce more offspring.
OTOH, having movie theaters and other form of entertainment mke live better for a lot of people, so they can be seen as essential as well.
HAM radio operators are essential? No they are not. People have survived longer with them than without them. The fact that you bought one for the Y2K collaps of civilisation does not mean anything.
To me, as a human being, humans are essential, not their jobs. I work for a living. I do not live for my work. There is plenty to go around to cut working hours in half and spend the gained time with friends or family or whatever we desire.
And the fact that some jobs will survive (there are still people that train horses) does not mean they are essential.
Fishing and farming has reduced in workforce a LOT. Building does not require as much people as e.g. in Egypt. We could build that pyramid, faster, cheaper better and with way less people right now. We have made things way bigger than the piramyds already. The need to repair has gone down in both time and cost. Automation of irigation has been going on for a long time. As well as the repair of them. Just look how much people the Netherlands needs now compared to when the windmills where still a thing.
The jobs will survive, but not even close in the numbers that exist now.
So we need to get our heads out of our asses and stop thinking that the only valuable people are those who do "essential" jobs and that the rest is waste. Instead we should look at the humans and see how we, as a species, spread the wealth and the free time, so we can become more human.
That, or a big war or revolution where a lot of people get killed and we need to build and rebuild. That sure sounds as the easier option.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.