ARE ROBOTS COMING TO STEAL YOUR JOB?
If you work in waste management, transport, manufacturing or retail, you might want to consider a career change...
IT MIGHT sound like a plot from a sci-fi film - but latest figures suggest robots could be set to take over more than 10 million of our jobs by 2030.
Automation is already a highly-visible factor in our lives. Self-service supermarket machines, voicerecognition devices in the home and vacuum cleaners that work without the need for human intervention have become commonplace in just a few short years. But that progress comes with a cost and analysts PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) believe a tide of robots will replace many of our jobs in the next 12 years. In terms of sheer numbers, retail is set to see the greatest loss of human workforce, with 2.3 million jobs at risk of automation. That’s a staggering 44 per cent of the industry. The sector is considered vulnerable because many of the tasks it involves are easily replicable, such as scanning and packaging goods. Manufacturing is judged at risk of losing 1.2 million jobs to robots, or 46 per cent of its workforce.
In percentage terms, some sectors are considered even more under-threat from automation.
In waste management, robots are tipped to take over 63 per cent of jobs by 2030.
And 56 per cent of jobs in transport and storage - 950,000 jobs in all - are set to be automated.
Those working as nannies, carers, and housekeepers are least at risk of missing out to robots, PwC believe.
Only 10,000 people - or eight per cent of the domestic sector - risk being replaced by robots by 2030.
Experts say that is because domestic activities can change daily, making them harder for robots to replicate.
PwC made the predictions by linking the automatability of job characteristics in each sector alongside the workers doing them, based on education and required training levels.
People with lower levels of education are considered at a greater risk of losing their jobs to robots.
For example, the education sector faces just nine per cent of its workforce being replaced by robots, because typically teachers must have at least one degree before they are qualified in their field.
On the other hand, those working in retail are able to leave school and start working immediately in the field, meaning their jobs can more easily be replaced.
With technology moving on so rapidly, however, it’s hard to see how any job can be considered truly “robotproof” in the longer term. Even the government might not be safe, if Phillip Hammond is to be believed. The Chancellor said: “There are very significant areas of government activity which involve relatively low-level decisionmaking which will be highly susceptible to artificial intelligence, which does present the tantalising possibility of being able to drive some real productivity enhancement in the delivery of government processes.”