10 states where robots are most likely to steal human jobs

Brian Pascus

Oct 23, 2018, 01:25 IST

10 states where robots are most likely to steal human jobs

Workers on the assembly line replace the back covers of 32-inch television sets at Element Electronics in Winnsboro, South Carolina

Automation is a technology trend that will impact various sectors of economic life this century.
Smart Asset, a financial technology company that provides online advice about personal finance decisions, recently released a study which calculated which states have jobs that are most vulnerable to automation.
They looked at Bureau of Labor Statistics and research studies done at Oxford University.
Smart Asset found that of the top 10 states with jobs most vulnerable to automation, three came from the Great Plains and six came from the South.

Because of the rate at which technology is progressing, automation is a trend that will impact various sectors of economic life this century. In fact, automation is already creating anxiety as to how our economy will be structured going forward.

According to The Guardian, 38% of U.S. jobs could be lost to automation in the next 15 years. The Janesville Gazette reports that a 2017 Pew Poll found that 72% of adults said they were worried about a future where robots and computers can perform human jobs.

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Smart Asset, a financial technology company that provides online advice about personal finance decisions, recently released a study which calculated which states have jobs that are most vulnerable to automation.

Smart Asset's methodology consisted of looking at employment data across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. and analyzing them from the two angles. First, they looked at total worker occupation data based on Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2017. Second, they looked at research studies done by Oxford University, namely "The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerization?" by Carl B. Frey and Michael A. Osborne, and analyzed the percent chance a specific occupation will be automated in a decade or two.

Smart Asset said they "multiplied the number of jobs in each occupation by the chance they will be automated for each state," and from there determined which states would have the highest percentage of jobs at risk.

Smart Asset found that of the top 10 states with jobs most vulnerable to automation, three came from the Great Plains and six came from the South.

Take a look below at the complete list of the 10 states where jobs are most vulnerable to the threat of automation.

10. Alabama — Smart Asset estimates just under 55% of jobs in Alabama could be automated, including motor vehicle assembly plants. Mercedes-Benz, Honda, and Toyota all have plants in the Cotton State.

9. Texas — Texas has the second most workers in the country, according to Smart Asset, and that includes fast-food workers. Some McDonald's franchises have already experimented with self-ordering kiosks.

8. Florida — Smart Asset estimates that 4.6 million of the roughly 8.4 million jobs in Florida face automation threats. These include retail salespeople, who may not be needed if self-checkout machines multiply.

7. Mississippi — Research finds that Mississippi has large numbers of hand laborers, which includes delivery workers and box-factory sorters. These occupations are directly threatened by machines replacing humans, according to the report.

6. South Carolina — Smart Asset estimates over 1.1 million jobs are at risk of automation in the Palmetto State, including those that work on assembly lines in factories.

5. Montana — According to Smart Asset, Montana employs large amounts of retail salespeople and general office clerks, occupations that face a 90% risk of being automated.

4. Louisiana — According to Smart Asset, there are 70,510 cashiers in Louisiana who have a 97% chance of being automated in the future. Those who shop at CVS can already find automated self-checkout machines, which portends to this trend growing.

3. Wyoming — 56.4% of jobs in Wyoming are at risk of automation, with construction equipment operators and truck drivers among the most threatened, with 8,900 jobs endangered between the two.

2. South Dakota — Smart Asset estimates that over 58% of jobs in South Dakota are at risk of automation, with positions in retail emerging as the largest potential job loss group.

1. Nevada — With retail and gaming among the top industries in this state, SmartAsset estimates nearly three in five jobs (766,100 out of 1,295,000) in Nevada are at risk of automation.

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