The Robots Are Coming: 38% of U.S. Jobs Soon To Be Automated

Up to 38 percent of jobs in the U.S. are at a high risk of being eliminated due to advances in automation, according to a new report by consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The risk is highest in sectors such as transportation and storage (56 percent), manufacturing (46 percent), and wholesale and retail (44 percent) and lower in sectors such as health and social work (17 percent), according to the study.

"These estimates are based on an algorithm linking automatability to the characteristics of the tasks involved in different jobs as well as those of the workers doing them (e.g., the education and training levels required)," PwC said in the report. The estimates are based on anticipated technological advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics between now and the early 2030s.

U.S. Jobs More Vulnerable than Other Economies

There is still an enormous amount of uncertainty in these figures, however, as PwC was quick to point out. "Not all of these technologically feasible job automations may occur in practice for the economic, legal and regulatory reasons," according to the report.

The study also found that jobs in the U.S. are significantly more likely to be at risk of being replaced by computers. Only 30 percent of jobs in the U.K. are considered at risk. In comparison, 35 percent of jobs in Germany are considered at risk and only 21 percent of Japanese jobs are thought to be at risk.

"We find that the larger proportion of jobs at potential high risk of automation in the US is almost exclusively driven by differences in the automatability of jobs for given industry sectors," PwC said. “The US has a similarly service-dominated economy to the UK with relatively little difference in employment shares by industry sector."

Finance Jobs at Risk

The biggest differences between the two economies are seen in the comparison between specific sectors. In the finance and insurance sector, for example, as many as 61 percent of jobs in the U.S. could be automated, compared with only 32 percent in the U.K.

PwC said that its analysis suggests that the key difference is related to the average education levels of finance professionals being significantly higher in the UK than the US.

“This may reflect the greater weight in the UK of City of London finance professionals working in international markets, whereas in the US there is more focus on the domestic retail market and many more workers who do not need to have the same educational levels," according to the report. "The jobs of these US retail financial workers are assessed by our methodology as being significantly more routine -- and so more automatable -- then the average finance sector job in the UK, with its greater weight on international finance and investment banking.”

That could indicate a major opportunity for U.S. companies to reduce overhead by investing in AI and automation, even in sectors that are usually considered too complex or technical to be easily affected by automation.