Technology experts and economists are engaged in a growing debate about the effect of automation technologies in the workplace. Some “techno-pessimists” are concerned about the mass destruction of jobs, while “techno-optimists” see considerable productivity gains for the economy that will in turn help create new work opportunities. Technology in the past has tended to create … Continue reading
Technological change has reshaped the workplace continually over the past two centuries since the Industrial Revolution, but the speed with which automation technologies are developing today, and the scale at which they could disrupt the world of work, are largely without precedent. MGI research on the automation potential of the global economy, focusing on 46 … Continue reading
“Big data and algorithms are going to challenge white-collar, professional knowledge work in the 21st century in the same way that factory automation and the assembly line challenged blue-collar labor in the 20th century.”
Fundamental changes in technologies and production systems and the emergence of new industries are major drivers of growth and development. They have the power to transform the world of work by destroying jobs, generating new ones and transforming the nature of jobs. Hence, ever since the Industrial Revolution, workers, business people, policy makers, and academics … Continue reading
As robots and other computer-assisted technologies take over tasks previously performed by labour, there is increasing concern about the future of jobs and wages. This column discusses evidence that industrial robots reduced employment and wages between 1990 and 2007. Estimates suggest that an extra robot per 1,000 workers reduces the employment to population ratio by 0.18-0.34 … Continue reading
Orange robots at the company’s sorting stations are able to identify the destination of a package through a code-scan, virtually eliminating sorting mistakes. Shentong’s army of robots can sort up to 200,000 packages a day, and are self-charging, meaning they are operational 24/7. The company estimates its robotic sorting system is saving around 70-percent of … Continue reading
Today, about half the activities that people are paid to do in the global economy have the potential to be automated by adapting demonstrated technology. As we’ve described previously, our focus is on individual work activities, which we believe to be a more useful way to examine automation potential than looking at entire jobs, since most … Continue reading
More than five million jobs, almost 40 per cent of Australian jobs that exist today, have a moderate to high likelihood of disappearing in the next 10 to 15 years due to technological advancements, a CEDA report being released today has found. Figure 1 shows the estimated probabilities of the susceptibility of jobs to computerisation … Continue reading
With between a quarter and two-fifths of jobs at high or medium risk of automation in OECD countries, it is expected that dynamically evolving technologies will render several of workers’ skills obsolete whilst placing a high premium on others. Indeed, Cedefop’s ESJ survey (Cedefop, 2015) revealed that about a quarter (26%) of adult employees in … Continue reading
Last year, two leading economists described a future in which humans come out ahead. But now they’ve declared a different winner: the robots. The industry most affected by automation is manufacturing. For every robot per thousand workers, up to six workers lost their jobs and wages fell by as much as three-fourths of a percent, … Continue reading
A new technological epoch is underway – the so-called Machine Age – reflecting advances in artificial intelligence, digitalisation and Big Data. Some commentators have claimed that this epoch is different from previous ones in that it will produce large-scale technological unemployment, while others argue the contrary. Only time will judge who is right on this … Continue reading
Automation has become one of the major ongoing stories regarding the future of the American economy. What began with the rise of robots—and loss of jobs—across manufacturing industries is now a full blown threat to traditional jobs across all industries, salary bands, and education requirements. The effects are wide-reaching, no job may be safe. On … Continue reading
In tandem with the diffusion of computer technologies, labour markets across the OECD have undergone rapid structural transformation. In this paper, we examine i) the impact of technological change on labour market outcomes since the computer revolution of the 1980s, and ii) recent developments in digital technology – including machine learning and robotics – and … Continue reading
A broad area of agreement: People need to learn new skills to work in the new economy. “The best response is to increase the skills of the labor force,” said Gregory Mankiw, an economist at Harvard. The most valuable thing could be to increase college enrollment and graduation rates. A growing number of jobs require … Continue reading
For this report we used methodologies both from Oxford professors Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne and from management consulting firm McKinsey & Company, which have been employed in other jurisdictions, and applied them both to Canadian data for the first time. Read this report to help you: Understand the effects that automation can … Continue reading