According to a recent study by Commodity.com, a commodities trading website, nearly 43% of DFW workers are at high risk of being replaced by automation, which could impact close to 1.05 million people. Across the United States, some 40 million workers could be affected.
Even before the rise of the pandemic, forced COVID-19 protocols, social distancing, and employee shortages, automation was already well on its way. The Brookings Institute did a study on automation replacement in 2019, showing a similar result.
According to the Brookings Institute, “Automation exists to substitute work undertaken by humans with work done by machines, with the aim of increasing the quality and quantity of output at a reduced cost.”
Some familiar examples of this are kiosks used to place orders in restaurants rather than cashiers or servers, an online chatbot in place of a customer service representative, and self-guiding machines that clean floors instead of janitorial workers.
Automation can easily take on jobs involving repetition, physical labor, information collection, and processing. Occupations such as food preparation, production, transportation, and office administration are among the most high-risk for replacement by automation and are often among the lowest-paying jobs.
According to the Commodity study, jobs at a medium risk include facilities care, sales, agriculture, and construction. Low-risk jobs include business, arts and entertainment, education, and legal and health practitioners.
In the Commodity study of metro areas with populations of 100,000 or more, Las Vegas ranked as the most at-risk city, with 49.3% of its jobs at risk of replacement by automation. This was due in part to the number of gambling dealers in the state that could easily be replaced by machines.
The Winston-Salem Journal explained, “Gambling Dealers, who have a probability of automation of 96%, earn a median annual wage of less than $24,000. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Chief Executives have just a 1.5% risk of automation and earn a median annual wage of $186,000. Most occupations fall somewhere between those extremes.”
The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area ranked number thirteen on the list.
However, the Brookings Institute reported that it would be unreasonable to expect automation and artificial intelligence to entirely take over the job market. Machines replace tasks, not jobs (which are a series of tasks), and there are limits to the tasks for which a machine can substitute. Also, technological potential does not necessarily equate to a likely projected outcome.
The Brookings Institute noted some positive ways that automation can affect humans in the workplace:
Automation complements labor.
Workplace activity that isn’t taken over by automation is complemented by it—making the remaining human tasks more valuable.
Automation can increase demand, creating jobs.
Automation-driven cost and quality improvements can increase demand to a degree that offsets any would-be job losses.
Capital and labor augmentation spurs innovation.
When machines handle routine, time-consuming activities, human capacity is freed-up to create new products and new tasks.