job loss – Impact Lab

Analysis, Coronavirus, Economy, Employment, Science & Technology News

At least half of people who have a job fear they’ll lose it in the next 12 months

November 9, 2020

Job losses are a concern for more than half of working adults.

New survey shows more than half of working adults fear for their jobs.

But two thirds of workers are optimistic about retraining on the current job.

Employment concerns and perceived opportunities to learn new skills vary greatly between countries.

A new Ipsos survey, conducted on behalf of the World Economic Forum, shows that more than half (54%) of working adults fear for their jobs in the next 12 months. However, these workers are outnumbered by those who think their employers will help them retrain on the current job for the jobs of the future (67%).

Continue reading… “At least half of people who have a job fear they’ll lose it in the next 12 months”

Automation, Employment, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

We would rather lose our jobs to robots than humans, a study shows

December 5, 2019

Losing your job to a human stings more than getting replaced by a robot, research found.

The question has a surprising psychological factor for workers now and in the future.

Losing a job can be stressful and demoralizing. Seeing your role replaced by automation is an additional stressor that more workers will have to contend with and worry about in the future.

Robots are already replacing people in some jobs. Apps take orders in chain restaurants, and some supermarkets use self-checkout machines to replace checkers. This is the new reality. The Brookings Institution predicts that 36 million Americans face a “high exposure to automation” in the coming decades, meaning they will have more than 70% of their role at risk of being substituted by artificial intelligence.

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Automation, Employment, Robots, Science & Technology News

Workers in these 10 US areas are more likely to be replaced by robots

December 4, 2019

A new report maps the top 10 areas of the US with the highest robot intensity

In the last decade, the number of manufacturing robots has more than doubled in the US to almost 2 per 1,000 workers

Some studies predict as many as 50% of all workers are at risk of losing their jobs to automation

Robots are displacing younger, less-educated, and minority workers in the Midwest manufacturing industry at the highest rates, a new report shows.

However, the findings also show that a strong economic recovery over the past decade has saved many jobs and slowed automation in the United States.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Employment, Science & Technology News

Artificial Intelligence will obliterate these jobs by 2030

November 27, 2019

In the AI world, data is the new currency and analytics competency a crucial competitive differentiator across business lines

Cubicle workers. Shipping clerks. Loan processors.

“All gone,” Forrester vice president and principal consultant Huard Smith said in describing the impact of artificial intelligence on various professions by 2030.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Employment, Science & Technology News

AI won’t take your job, people will

November 25, 2019

Machine intelligence, also known as artificial intelligence (AI) is going to have both an awesome and an unfortunate impact on our posterity. Let’s explore one possible way AI may impact the future of work, and how it may dramatically change how we train our workforce.

A brand manager needs an advertisement. So, the brand manager sends a brief to the senior art director (in-house or at an agency) and asks for something amazing to be created. On or before the deadline, the brand manager and the art director meet to review the work. The brand manager is presented with three approaches, and after a number of meetings, a number of revisions, and revelations, they agree on a final product.

This is a process that has repeated itself for more than a century, and AI is not going to stop it (today).

Continue reading… “AI won’t take your job, people will”

AI, Automation, Employment, Science & Technology News, women

AI Weekly: Automation in the workplace could disproportionately affect women

September 26, 2019

As AI and machine learning transform industries by automating much of the work currently done by humans, women’s careers will be disproportionately affected. That’s according to a McKinsey Global Institute report published earlier this year (“The future of women at work: Transitions in the age of automation“), which found that women predominate in occupations that’ll be adversely impacted. About 40% of jobs where men make up the majority in the 10 economies (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the U.K., the U.S., China, India, Mexico, and South America) contributing over 60% of GDP collectively could be displaced by automation in our 2030, compared with the 52% of women-dominated jobs with high automation potential.

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Automation, Driverless vehicles, Employment, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Truckers want to ban self-driving trucks in Missouri

September 7, 2019

Truck drivers worried about losing their jobs to robots staged a protest outside the Capitol building in Jefferson City, Missouri on Tuesday.

Their goal was to convince the government to pass a bill that would prohibit any self-driving trucks from driving on Missouri roads, KRCG reports. While there are no autonomous trucks handling shipping jobs in the state yet, the truckers see the emerging technology as a grave threat to their job security and livelihoods — unrest that signals what can happen when jobs are automated without giving thought to the displaced workers.

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Automation, Employment, new technology, New Viewpoints, Science & Technology News

The threat to the $100,000-a-year tech worker

July 29, 2019

Much of the discussion around the future of work focuses on what is already disappearing: jobs in factories, on farms, and in restaurants.

But coming automation-fueled job losses and changes will reverberate far beyond — and eventually reach seemingly safe workers in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street.

And those in-demand workers may not be prepared for what’s coming, as the bulk of government and company reskilling efforts are targeted toward the lower end.

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Automation, Employment, Report, Science & Technology News

The next big inequality crisis

July 24, 2019

Think polarization and inequality are bad now? Buckle up: big cities are poised to get bigger, richer and more powerful — at the expense of the rest of America, a new report by McKinsey Global Institute shows.

Why it matters: McKinsey’s analysis of 315 cities and more than 3,000 counties shows only the healthiest local economies will be able to successfully adapt to disruptions caused by the next wave of automation. Wide swaths of the country, especially already-distressed rural regions, are in danger of shedding more jobs.

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AI, Artificial Intelligence, Breakthrough Thinking, Futurist, Human Behavior, Science & Technology News

Artificial Intelligence and the future of humans

March 25, 2019

A vehicle and person recognition system for use by law enforcement is demonstrated at last year’s GPU Technology Conference in Washington, D.C., which highlights new uses for artificial intelligence and deep learning.

Experts say the rise of artificial intelligence will make most people better off over the next decade, but many have concerns about how advances in AI will affect what it means to be human, to be productive and to exercise free will.

Digital life is augmenting human capacities and disrupting eons-old human activities. Code-driven systems have spread to more than half of the world’s inhabitants in ambient information and connectivity, offering previously unimagined opportunities and unprecedented threats. As emerging algorithm-driven artificial intelligence (AI) continues to spread, will people be better off than they are today?

Some 979 technology pioneers, innovators, developers, business and policy leaders, researchers and activists answered this question in a canvassing of experts conducted in the summer of 2018.

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Automation, Business, Employment, Robotics, Robots, Science & Technology News

Don’t worry, robots aren’t going to steal your job — yet

June 24, 2018

One author says we have plenty of time before robots take over humans’ jobs.

As technology has advanced, Thomas Malone has watched his old family farm change drastically. The farm he grew up on once employed 15 people full-time and another 30 or 40 seasonally. Now, five people and many more machines farm about three times as many acres in land to produce significantly more goods.

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Automation, Big Problems, Business, City Planning, Employment, Science & Technology News

The coming jobs apocalypse

May 27, 2018

Congress and the Trump administration have yet to create a coherent policy response to a widely forecast social and economic tsunami resulting from automation, including the potential for decades of flat wages and joblessness. But cities and regions are starting to act on their own.

What’s happening: In Indianapolis, about 338,000 people are at high risk of automation taking their jobs, according to a new report. In Phoenix, the number is 650,000. In both cases, that’s 35% of the workforce. In northeastern Ohio, about 40,000 workers are at high risk.

Continue reading… “The coming jobs apocalypse”