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

bully balls

[weedjams]

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.

Re:bully balls

[Just A Gigolo]

I always choose the shelf-checkout since there are always too many idiots queuing to pay the cashier.

Re:bully balls

[ShanghaiBill]

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?

Re:bully balls

[AmiMoJo]

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?

One of the reasons that people like online shopping is that it eliminates the need to do the clerk's job yourself. No need to push the trolley round when you order online.

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.

Re:bully balls

[DarkOx]

Yes; and thankfully Amazon.com has brought that model back. I essentially go make them a list; someone or some robot fetches the items for me and other people deliver them. Its great for commodity items.

Oh look, more FUD!

[Rick Schumann]

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.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[ShanghaiBill]

Do these 'reports' in these 'newspapers' actually have any real credibility, or are they as full of shit as I think they are?

The latter. They are spewing economic nonsense.

Since the industrial revolution began three centuries ago, nearly every job has been automated out of existence, starting with spinners, weavers, and agriculture. Yet incomes have risen 20-fold and we currently have a full employment economy.

For fuck's sake people, every time there's a technological breakthrough of some sort human civilization has gone through this shit

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.

Re:Oh look, more FUD!

[serviscope_minor]

Since the industrial revolution began three centuries ago, nearly every job has been automated out of existence, starting with spinners, weavers, and agriculture. Yet incomes have risen 20-fold and we currently have a full employment economy.

1. All automation in the past was GOOD.

For us now but not for the people at the time. Go and read some Dickens. Life sucked very hard for a lot of people.

2. All automation in the future will be BAD.

So exactly like it was in the past? "we" ight be more productive now, but that's in aggregate not for individuals.

How about we don't make the same mistakes as last time and make it not suck for large amount of the population, eh?

Re:What to do with all the people?

[religionofpeas]

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.

This is an opportunity. Not a problem.

[91degrees]

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?

But really, you have to ask yourself -

[swell]

Does your job actually offer any benefit to the world at large? Does your company offer goods or services that are unique and essential?

Humans need food, water, shelter and energy. Everything else is extra; non-essential. If you are producing essentials and doing it in a way that machines can't easily duplicate- no worries! If you are producing pretty fashion items, mindless amusements, sexy sports cars, or kitchen appliances that produce an exotic coffee product using proprietary supplies ... well you might be expendable.

The first world economy requires ever increasing consumer consumption to survive and provide jobs for us and profits for the wealthy. It's a delicate balance. If consumers stop buying things they don't actually need, then the house of cards will collapse.

Fishing & farming are the essential activities. Building skills for homes and watercraft. Repair skills for tractors & irrigation systems. Ham radio operators. These are the jobs that will survive the automation apocalypse.

Re:But really, you have to ask yourself -

[houghi]

Does your job actually offer any benefit to the world at large? Does your company offer goods or services that are unique and essential?

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.

Here we go again

[xenobyte]

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.

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.

Social Welfare

[DrYak]

For us now but not for the people at the time. Go and read some Dickens. Life sucked very hard for a lot of people.

...in a society that completely lacked any form of social welfare, social assistance to help you transition, unemployment benefits to make the end meets until you find yourself some other source of income, etc.

Where basically if you didn't have education and some economies in the bank (i.e.: was rich enough to even *have* a bank account to begin with), Society's only opinion was "sucks to be with you".

Yes, this time, this is exactly going to go the exact same way as the dystopian past of Dickens' time.

Re:For a scarier headline

[stealth_finger]

What's threatening about one automaton?

I'm guessing it's a really big one.