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Are the robotic technologies going to put humans out of work?

How do they change the job markets and how can we respond to the negative changes?

 

In this study, under the supervision of the OECD, the three researchers provide us with answers to some of our greatest questions about automation of jobs. We all heard scary predictions where the robots finally put the poorest of our societies out of work and increase inequalities even more. It is now time to confront those prejudices with the mathematical and economical reality. In addition to this confrontation between theories and realities, the authors discuss how our societies should address this new and exciting challenge.

 

> Thesis

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Contrary to an occupation-based approach as the one that is proposed by Frey and Osborne (2013) where a jobless future is predicted because they draw a list of jobs that are as a whole potential subject to automation, Arnzt, Gregory and Zierahn decide to decompose the different jobs in order to action by action. They immediately conclude that the Frey and Osborne approach leads to a dangerously high overestimation of job automability. Indeed even in so called “high-risk” jobs there are some tasks that are not easily computerized in our current capacities.

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From these conclusions they set two main goals:

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Proving that the automability of jobs is lower than our previous estimations, from 4 to 15% of the jobs in the OECD countries. These differences between countries, even on the same field of study show that we need to better estimate the content of occupations in order to qualify their risk of computerization.  

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Proposing a new approach of the future of jobs with a high-risk of computerization: not as employment loss but as new opportunities. First because it will take time to adapt the technology, meaning that the actual loss of the job is not to be expected immediately. Second the workers can and must adapt to the new task that will be created in support of the machines.

 

 

> Main recommendations

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The authors recommend very strongly an adaptation of our jobs system where we take the workers in charge before the computerization of their occupations and form them on the machine management immediately when the machine enters the work place.

Through these voluntary employment politics we can hope to minimize the loss of jobs and improve the quality of work for the insiders.

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> Policy recommendations 

 

The authors recommend an increase of the efforts on:

• Education and formation

• Investment in the research of computerization

• Re-training of unqualified workers

• Financially support the employment of humans

• Strong incentive (by adapting taxation for example) in re-hiring the workers whose jobs have been computerized

 

> Interesting propositions 

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> The critic of the well respected “Frey and Osborn interpretation” about the future of employment

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The alarming threat of job computerization as summarized on this graph is the conclusion of the work of Frey and Osborn in 2013, these conclusions have been widely accepted by the scientific communities (and are studied in Universities and School like Sciences Po Paris). But the three researchers denounce the lack of precision of this work and propose to us a new and more detailed analysis that is a lot more hopeful in its previsions. 

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> Strengths and weaknesses of this article 

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+  This article is extremely pedagogic and the authors take the reader by the hand through their reasoning and interpretation, after a thorough explanation of the statistical method. It makes the conclusions very legitimate and credible.  

-   The recommendations provided are all very reasonable and hopeful, but they are too consensual and do not propose a real solution against the inequality caused by computerization between qualified and unqualified workers.

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> The authors

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• Melanie Arntz

  • Junior Professor at the University of Heidelberg

  • Provisional head of the Research Department “Labour markets, Human resources and social policy” at the Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim

 

• Terry Gregory

  • Senior researcher at the Research Department “Labour markets, Human resources and social policy” at the Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim

 

• Ulrich Zierahn

  • Senior researcher at the Research Department “Labour markets, Human resources and social policy” at the Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim

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>   Interested enough to read their article ? 

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