Estimates of US job automation risk range widely from 9 to 47 percent

Evidence

With the arrival of the “second machine age,” the destruction of many jobs is a given, even if the scope of the transformation is still up for debate. According to some estimates, digital automation puts up to 47 percent of all US employment at “high risk” of vanishing. In the retail sector alone, this translates into 7.5 million jobs out of a total of 16 million. Other estimates that focus on tasks instead of occupations present a much smaller figure of 9 percent of jobs at risk of disappearing. Looking at historical data instead of predictions reveals that adding one robot to a workforce of one thousand human workers has increased unemployment and reduced wages, even if the shifts are very small thus far. Nonetheless, it is hard to project past trends into the future without accounting for the disruptive power of technology. Most analysts agree that the question of the impact of automation cannot be tackled without looking at wider societal issues such as basic income, tax reform, and educational changes. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 240

Categorization

• XREF: Order-of-magnitude disagreement between task-based and occupation-based automation estimates is a canonical methodological example. — connects to: Digital automation threatens up to 47 percent of US jobs — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 240

Broader Connections

• Digital automation threatens up to 47 percent of US jobs #exemplifies (0.95) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 240