Robots will 'take 800 million jobs by 2030' - report
About 800
million global workers will lose their jobs by 2030 and be replaced by robotic
automation, a new report from a consultancy has found...Should that scare us
now or make us more tech savvy?
The study of
46 countries and 800 occupations by the McKinsey Global Institute found that up
to one-fifth of the global work force will be affected.
It said
one-third of the workforce in richer nations like Germany and the US may need
to retrain for other jobs.
Machine
operators and food workers will be hit hardest, the report says.
Poorer
countries that have less money to invest in automation will not be affected as
much, according to McKinsey.
India, the
authors write, will only have about 9% of jobs replaced by emerging technologies.
The authors
see tasks carried out by mortgage brokers, paralegals, accountants, and some
back-office staff as especially vulnerable to automation.
Jobs
requiring human interaction such as doctors, lawyers, teachers and bartenders
are seen by McKinsey as less prone to automation.
Specialised
lower-wage jobs, such as gardening, plumbing and care work, will also be less
affected by automation, the study predicted.
In developed
countries, the need for a university education will grow, as jobs that require
less education shrink.
In the US
alone, 39 to 73 million jobs may be eliminated by 2030, but about 20 million of
those displaced workers may be able to easily transfer to other industries,
according to the McKinsey report.
In the UK,
20% of current jobs will be automated over the same period, the author's
forecast.
The authors
believe the world will see a transition on the scale of the early 1900s when
much of global industry switched from farming to factory work.
But they
caution that new technology will yield new types of jobs, similar to the
introduction of the personal computer in the 1980s which led to technology
support work, and online business.
The report's
authors urge governments to enact plans to retrain their citizens.
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