Late last year, The AFR reported that 500,000 Australian jobs are at risk as automation swallows accountants, supermarket cashiers, secretaries, typists and bank tellers, amongst other professions. This report followed similar warnings from The Economist and The Atlantic last year that increasing automation, computerisation and artificial intelligence could place at risk half of current jobs in the United States within a decade or two.
Late last week, new research was released from Henry Siu at the University of British Columbia and Nir Jaimovich from Duke University, which shows that routine jobs – those that are most sensitive to technological change – have collapsed in the US since 2001, leading to “jobless recoveries”:
One of the big puzzles of the U.S. economy is where the jobs have gone during the most recent economic recovery. How can it be that Real GDP and stock market valuations have recovered, and yet employment has remained flat, years since the end of the Great Recession? And how does this relate to the ongoing hollowing out of the American middle-class?..
Many of the routine occupations that were once commonplace have begun to disappear, while others have become obsolete. This is because the tasks involved in these occupations, by their nature, are prime candidates to be performed by new technologies…
We show that over the past 40 years, structural change within the labor market has revealed itself during downturns and recoveries. The arrival of robotics, computing, and information technology has allowed for a large-scale automation of routine tasks. This has meant that the elimination of middle-wage jobs during recessions has not been accompanied by the return of such jobs afterward. This is true of both blue-collar jobs, like those in production occupations, and white-collar jobs in office and administrative support occupations. Thus, the disappearance of job opportunities in routine occupations is leading to jobless recoveries…
As noted previously, if you are young person seeking a career, you would be well advised to begin looking at these new trends and considering moving into fields that are less likely to be impacted by robotics and automation. Start with the below lists from The Economist and The Atlantic and then hope that there are no further technological breakthroughs that make your chosen vocation redundant!
