BoE Says 15 Million U.K. Citizens Will Lose Their Jobs To Robots
The U.K job market has done rather well in 2015 when compared to European job markets. The rate of unemployment has dropped and annual salaries are also expected to rise in 2016. However, the Bank of England recently cautioned U.K nationals of the possibility of losing close to 15 million jobs during the next couple of decades to the Robotics industry.
The Bank of England has completed an extensive research project and shared its findings with the Trades Union Congress. Andy Haldane, the Bank’s chief economist was in London to highlight some of the key points of the report and told Congress to be prepared of losing close to 15 million jobs in the next 20 years as these jobs would soon be automated thanks to the rapid growth of the robotics industry.
The U.K currently has a population of around 64 million individuals and over 31 million are currently employed. Haldane stated that the bank had taken into consideration the average number of people being employed in each industry and the average number of jobs that will be automated by robotics in each industry. Haldane also stated that while their research suggested 15 million jobs could be automated, that number could be a lot higher due to technology advancements in the next 20 years.
In a statement, Haldane said
Machines are already undertaking tasks which were unthinkable – if not unimaginable – a decade ago. The driverless car was science fiction no more than a decade ago. Today it is scientific fact. In a world in which machines came to dominate tasks involving core cognitive processing, the importance of, and skill premium attached to, non-cognitive skills is likely to rise…yet our education system, at present, has a strongly cognitive slant. Perhaps in future that will need to change, with as much effort put into cultivating social CVs as academic ones.
The bank believes that the customer service and sales will be the two biggest sectors to be impacted by robotics as close to 70% of all jobs will be automated. The traditional professions and managerial jobs will be the sectors that have the least impact of robotics. The bank stated that lower income jobs will be the first segment to get affected as these jobs were easier to automate and it would displace a number of employees and cause serious concerns for their well-being and the labor market.
