Will automation put us out of jobs?
Introduction
All throughout the history of mankind, technology has always affected the way we work. From the first moment that men have started to use stone tools, to the introduction of the internet, technology has shaped the efficiency of the nature of the tasks that we carry out, and naturally, also shaped the landscape of jobs. Now, we are living through the age of automation.
It is clear that automation will change the way we work, but there are uncertainties regarding the breadth and magnitude of impact that it will bring about. Through this post, we’ll try to guess what the next wave of technological innovation in automation would be, and how it will affect the future of work.
What is Automation?
In order to gauge the impact of automation and its effect on the future of work, we must first understand what automation is. There is a myriad of ways in which automation is defined, and among those definitions, one that is generally accepted is that made by the International Society of Automation: ‘the creation and application of technology to monitor and control the production and delivery of products and services.[1]’ But for the sake of this post, I would suggest defining automation as ‘the spectrum of technologies used to replace human labor, by combining both hardware and software’.
The reason why I believe that the definition above is important, is because the future of automation is driven by two core components of technology: robotics, and artificial intelligence. Robotics replaces the physical aspects of human work, and artificial intelligence replaces the function of the human brain and its ability to process information. The word ‘replace’ is an important distinguisher, since by replacing aspects of the human body, in turn, automation replaces human work.
Technology and jobs of the past
Now that we have an idea of what automation is, we can start to assess what automation would do to the future of work. But there is one more critical aspect of technological advancement that must be taken under consideration: technology destroys existing jobs, but also creates new ones.
If we look at the evolution of jobs and labor in the US, we can see that technology having a huge impact on agriculture employment, but also creating jobs in new areas such as retail, education and healthcare. While employment in agriculture and manufacturing, where manual labor played a crucial role, decrease by 55.9% and 3.6% respectively, it rose in retail, education and healthcare by 12.8%, 9.9%, 9.3% respectively[2].
One could argue that maybe the nature of technology replacing agricultural employment is different from current advancements such as computers and the internet, and the effect may be much more devastating. But again, according to a recent study[3], the net impact of the advancement of computer technology on jobs was not only not devastating but a net gain; there were 3.5 million jobs lost between 1980 and 2015 due to computers, but they created 19 million new one, summing up to a net gain of 15.7 million. From this, we can surmise that that while automation replaces existing jobs such as manual labor, it also creates new ones, such as system management and process innovation technicians.
Therefore, we should look at the impact of automation on jobs in two separate aspects: what jobs disappear, and what jobs do we gain?
The Impact of Automation on Jobs
First, what jobs will we lost due to automation? As discussed above, the advancement of automation may be much more impactful from the technological developments of the past, both in terms quality and speed. And of the two aspects of robotics and AI, AI is predicted to bring about a larger change. Especially with the development of self-learning and increased computing power, along with the ability to store and use exponentially more data compared to the past, will affect jobs more than technology has done in the past.
Jobs and employment can be divided into two axes: the nature of work, and industry. And the magnitude of which each industry is affected can be determined by looking at the composition of the nature of tasks of each industry. According to a recent study[4], tasks in each sector can be divided into six categories: manual task, routine task, computation, management, social interaction, and literacy skills. And of these tasks, the likeliness of automation replacing the tasks decreases from the former to the later. For instance, in construction, manual tasks take up 23% of the total tasks carried out, leaving it highly likely to be affected by automation. On the other hand, in education, manual tasks only take up 11%. As such, each sector has a different level of vulnerability to automation.
By mapping the composition of tasks of each industry, we can predict the likelihood that automation will disrupt the sector, which is depicted in the research[5] carried out below.
While sectors such as transportation, manufacturing, construction where manual and routine labor take up most of the tasks will likely to be replaced by automation, sectors in which human judgement and interaction is much more important such as education will have a smaller likelihood of disruption.
Then, what jobs will we gain due to automation? According to experts, the need for jobs with technological skills and social/emotional skills will increase.
The advancement of automation requires people who can develop and fine tune the hardware and software needed for automation. Accordingly, we are expected to see a rise in occupations regarding IT and computer programming.
Also, jobs that require tasks that are inherently of a ‘human’ nature, such as education, counselling, will not only remain unreplaced, but will see an increase in demand, at least in the near future.
As such, we are expected to see more jobs in the technological department, such as software engineers and programmers, and also in education/service sector, such as expert consultants and counselors.
Conclusion
While automation can be regarded as a grim reaper that puts an end to all human work, it in fact is not. While there are aspects of human work that automation is sure to put an end to, it seems that some parts of jobs of the future will remain ‘human’, at least in the near future.
[1] https://www.isa.org/about-isa/what-is-automation
[2] IPUMS USA 2017
[3] https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/jobs-lost-jobs-gained-what-the-future-of-work-will-mean-for-jobs-skills-and-wages
[4] https://public.tableau.com/profile/mckinsey.analytics#!/vizhome/AutomationBySector/WhereMachinesCanReplaceHumans
[5] https://www.pwc.co.uk/services/economics/insights/the-impact-of-automation-on-jobs.html
