Hoping to calm criticism, ride-hailing service Uber this month announced that it plans to have at least 1 million women drivers in place by the end of the decade.
But those jobs might be short-lived. A new study by Oxford University warns that as much as 47% of all U.S. jobs could be automated out of existence over the next 20 years.
Uber and rival Lyft are already giving serious thought to turning to fully driverless vehicles – as is Google, the tech giant already putting together a fleet of autonomous vehicles that will be used in a test program near its Silicon Valley headquarters.
Over the last quarter century we’ve seen a sharp shift in manufacturing where large numbers of traditional jobs have been replaced by machine.
The range of jobs that are vulnerable may come as a surprise, robots or simply algorithms taking over everything from customer service to table service at restaurants. Several technology firms are even developing automated news services that take raw data input – say, an automaker’s earnings report – and punch out neat and tidy stories.
Some of the biggest cuts could come in the auto industry and in jobs related to motor vehicles, stressed Michael Osbourne, a co-director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment. The group used its own research algorithm and U.S. Bureau of Statistics data as the basis of the study.
Of course, automation has long been a force in the auto industry. And, in early years, it helped create jobs by helping pioneers like Henry Ford bring the cost of a car down to the point where it could be affordable to the average American. By the 1970s, it was widely estimated, one in seven U.S. jobs was linked with the auto industry, much of that work along the assembly line.
But that began to shift with the arrival of robots and ever-smaller and more powerful computers. Assembly lines like the one at the Ford Rouge complex in Dearborn, Michigan, once would require as many as 5,000 workers to turn out perhaps 200,000 cars annually. Today, some plants are rolling out almost twice that volume with less than half the workforce.
The automation revolution is set to extend beyond the factory, emphasizes the new Oxford study. We’ve already begun to see that in the office, where word processors have replaced the secretarial pool, and desktop computers trim the need for accountants and other number-crunchers.
What’s next? “Forklift drivers, truck drivers, agricultural vehicle drivers,” Osbourne noted during a conference in which the report’s findings were revealed. “Those jobs could be gone very soon.”
Even local delivery services could be impacted. Consider Amazon’s interest in using drones.
How much further might this go?
To see the original story go to The Detroit Bureau.
