Computers could replace about 47 percent of jobs research finds

“…Over the past decades, computers have substituted for a number of jobs, including the functions of bookkeepers, cashiers and telephone operators” write Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne in The future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerisation? (quotes to follow)

More recently, the poor performance of labour markets across advanced economies has intensified the debate about technological unemployment among economists. While there is ongoing disagreement about the driving forces behind the persistently high unemployment rates, a number of scholars have pointed at computer-controlled equipment as a possible explanation for recent jobless growth.

The impact of computerisation on labour market outcomes is well-established in the literature, documenting the decline of employment in routine intensive occupations – i.e. occupations mainly consisting of tasks following well-defined procedures that can easily be performed by sophisticated algorithms.

The authors examine how susceptible jobs are to computerisation. To assess this, The authors…