TECHNOLOGY AT WORK

February 2015
Citi GPS: Global Perspectives & Solutions
61
respectively. 83 By contrast, occupations such as Computer Network Specialists and
Web Developers, of which many work in Information, already employ 143,000 and
141,000 workers, respectively, and are expected to add another 94,200 jobs before
2022, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) occupational
projections. This illustrates an important challenge facing companies in most
industries: as low-skill jobs are being replaced and new high-skill jobs created, they
will need to invest substantially in up-skilling their workforce.
No single industry is completely immune to
the expanding scope of automation
Outside of the US, studies have found that
upwards of 54% of EU jobs are at risk
However, these estimates are likely to be
systemically upward-biased
Other industries that are at low-risk of automation include Management of
Companies and Enterprise, and somewhat surprisingly Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing
and Hunting, most likely reflecting that most jobs that can be automated in
agriculture already have been. The potential scope for further automation is
substantially larger in Manufacturing, where 62% of jobs are still at risk.
No single industry is completely immune to the expanding scope of automation.
Even in some relatively skilled industries such as Finance and Insurance, 54% of
jobs are at risk. Traditional low productivity industries such as Healthcare, Education
and Government are facing future transformations too. At a time when government
budgets are under pressure, such productivity gains would be a blessing.
Countries at Risk
To be sure, some countries are better positioned to adapt to the expanding scope of
automation than others. Because different occupational classifications exist across
countries, however, meaningful direct comparisons are notoriously difficult to make.
In a recent study, for example, Bruegel translated our findings for the US to 28
European Union (EU) countries, using 22 (instead of 702) more aggregated
International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) job categories for which
the International Labor Organization (ILO) provides consistent data. Doing so, they
find that 54% of EU jobs are at risk of automation, spanning 47% in Sweden and
62% in Romania (see Figure 49).
Nevertheless, while the ILO data used by Bruegel is comparable across the
countries they examine, the relatively crude occupational classification being used
is likely to be systematically upward biased. Because many occupations with very
different probabilities of automation often fall into the same broader category, and
the employment share in occupations that have a higher probability of automation is
likely to be relatively low, the Bruegel study most likely overstates the share of jobs
at risk relative to the US. This is also suggested by other studies using more
detailed occupational classifications for single European countries. According to a
study by The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA), examining 410
detailed occupations, about 37% of jobs in Finland are at risk of automation.
Similarly, when translating our findings to the United Kingdom, analysing 369
occupations, we found that 35% of UK jobs are highly susceptible to automation,
and in skilled places like London that figure is even lower (29.5%).
83 Based on BLS employment figures for 2012.
© 2015 Citigroup