Most experts and industry watchers agree that while artificial intelligence and robots won’t “steal jobs from workers,” it will have an impact as certain jobs are reduced or eliminated, to be replaced with other, newer types of jobs.
In a 2013 paper published by Oxford University researchers Carl B. Frey and Michael A. Osborne, an estimated 47% jobs in the U.S. are “vulnerable to automation” with certain jobs more susceptible to automation than others. Occupations that include titles such as tax preparers, real estate brokers, cashiers and administrative assistants have been identified that have a 95% chance of computerization, according to the findings.
SmartAsset, a financial technology company that provides personal finance advice and tools for customers, used the findings to understand which areas in the U.S. have the greatest percentage of jobs vulnerable to automation. To come up with its rankings, the site looked at two factors – the risk of automation in each occupation based on the Oxford study, and the number of people working in different occupations in each metropolitan area. Those metrics were then used to compute the percentage of jobs at risk for each of 150 locations analyzed.
In addition to its rankings, the study revealed two other findings:
- Automation and wages – of the top 10 places with the biggest percentage of jobs at risk to automation, all but one of them rank in the bottom third of the metropolitan areas in terms of median annual income.
- Retail, cashiers, waiters/waitresses – These jobs in particular, which are very susceptible to automation according to the Oxford research, are also very popular in the regions that are vulnerable.
More details on each of the individual metro areas looked at are available here.
Source: SmartAsset
