If Your Job Hasn't Been Taken Over by Machines Yet, Just Wait
Editors' pick: Originally published June 30.
Don't pack up your cubicle quite yet. Though robots and automation are probably already transforming your day job, you have roughly a 60% chance of not losing your employment to a machine, according to a recent report from Forrester Research.
Automation and robotics can be seen in everything from manufacturing to logistics to food services and retail, but what are the jobs most likely to be taken over by machines? The proof may already be out there.
There has already been a quiet entrance of robotics into businesses. You can order your meals at Chili's, owned by Brinker International (EAT) - Get Report , on a tablet in all of its U.S. locations, the iRobot Roomba vacuums your carpets, Botlr the robot bellhop brings items from hotel lobbies to guest rooms in California, Lowe's Companies (LOW) - Get Report uses a customer service robot called OSHbot to move merchandise, and the Associated Press uses automation to write earnings reports.
Amazon (AMZN) - Get Report , the retailer of the future, has adopted an intricate system of drones and robots in its warehouses, replacing tasks that would have normally gone to blue collar workers. Its new product, Prime Air, is designed to deliver packages to customers in 30 minutes or less using a small drone. No release time has been announced for the delivery method.
By 2025, some researchers are saying one in three jobs could be replaced by smart machines.
Though the future seems bleak for some employees, and Forrester suggests that some jobs could even be lost by 2020, there is a silver lining. Robots may actually create jobs just as fast as they eliminate them. Moreover, jobs that require interacting with others, negotiation and cleverness are also more safe than more manual labor jobs.
Jobs that have us working side-by-side with technology will require new skills to ensure that humans and robots work more efficiently. Forrester even details entirely new positions like robot monitoring professionals, data scientists, automation specialists and content curators.
Forrester reported that robots, automation, smart machines and machine learning systems will replace 16% of U.S. jobs, however smart technology will create the equivalent of another 9%, leaving behind a 7% job reduction. Forrester also said that in the next nine years, smart technology will create 13.9 million new jobs.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the largest employers within retail trade -- one of the largest sectors to be overrun with technology -- are general merchandise, and food and beverage stores (each with about 3 million workers). In May 2013, there were 15.2 million people employed by retail trade. But good news: BLS predicted that between 2012 and 2022 employment would grow in this sector, as more jobs will become available as current employees leave.
More recently, from May to February, employment in the retail sector rose slightly from 15.8 million to 15. 9 million employees, according to data from BLS.
Transforming jobs that can be laborious, time-consuming and distracting from big-picture projects, such as crunching numbers, writing earnings reports, making sales calls or doing office administrative work, may become the responsibility of the robot.
Money is pouring in to these sectors, and technology seems to be the cause. In 2015, eager tech hopefuls invested a record $587 million in startups trying to bring robots to manufacturing plants, hospitals and battlefields,
according to a Time magazine article.
Robots are being trusted with more of our daily lives, and perhaps for good reason. Their margin of error has sharply decreased since 2011. Automation now has less than a 5% error rate, which is below the human rate of error.
Last May, NPR created a job automation calculator, where you can test if your job will withstand the possibility of automation. According to this calculator, the jobs that make it through the automation crisis include choreographer (0.4% chance of automation), mental health and substance abuse worker (0.3%), elementary school teachers (0.4%) and medical scientists (0.5%).