We’re only five years out from robots replacing 6% of US jobs, according to a new report from Forrester’s Bryan Hopkins. The sectors that’ll be most affected include transportation, logistics, customer service, and consumer services. Hopkins says the rise of robots in the workplace will come from greater availability of AI and cognitive technologies.
The technology either exists or is close to existing for many customer service workers to be replaced and the same goes for taxi drivers and truck drivers.
Six percent is huge. In an economy that’s really not creating regular full-time jobs, the ability of people to easily find new employment is going to diminish. So we will have people wanting to work and struggling to find jobs because the same trends are beginning to occur in other historically richer job creation areas like banking, retail and healthcare. – Andy Stern, Service Employees International Union
As is always the case, the labor market will need to adapt in the coming years to deal with the rise of robots and AI.
