Applicants queue at a job fair. AP
According to a McKinsey study, nearly 12 million US workers could have to change jobs by 2030.
Low-wage workers are expected to be affected 14 times more often.
Here are the professions that have been hit hardest.
This is a machine translation of an article by our US colleagues at Insider. It was automatically translated and checked by a real editor. We welcome feedback at the end of the article.
Nearly 12 million Americans in declining demand occupations may have to change jobs by 2030.
This is from a new one Study by management consultancy McKinsey, which examined how the rise of artificial intelligence and other factors such as an aging population and e-commerce could affect US employment in the years to come.
In recent years, the job-turning boom dubbed the “Great Resignation” has been fueled by workers seeking better pay and a balanced career. However, McKinsey researchers estimate that by 2030, 11.8 million workers will have to change jobs, not because they want to but because they have to. According to the study, around nine million of them may have to find entirely new jobs in new sectors.
Most jobs are likely to be lost in customer service and sales, among other things
Michael Chui, a partner at McKinsey’s Research Institute who has researched the impact of new technologies on businesses and co-authored the study, told Business Insider that 75 percent of projected job losses will fall into four categories: clerical support, customer service and sales, hospitality, and manufacturing work (e.g. manufacturing).
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Low-wage workers are expected to be the hardest hit by these changes. The study found that Americans in low-wage jobs are up to 14 times more likely to have to change jobs by 2030. At the same time, the study found that demand for higher-paying jobs in sectors such as healthcare, engineering and transportation is likely to increase significantly in the future.
These factors influence whether jobs are lost or continue to grow
Chui pointed to four key factors responsible for the projected shifts in labor demand.
The first factor is workplace automation, which could be fueled by the rise of generative AI technologies like Chat GPT. The study found that up to 30 percent of the hours currently worked in the US could be automated by 2030. “That will change the number of hours people have to work when machines sometimes do some of the work,” he said.
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Researchers predict that generative AI will improve rather than replace the work of STEM professionals, creatives, business people and legal professionals. The biggest negative impacts of automation could be on the clerical support, customer service and sales, and hospitality professions.
The study estimates that within the four hardest-hit categories, demand for clerical workers, retail salespeople, administrative assistants, and cashiers will each fall by more than 600,000 jobs by 2030, in part because these occupations “have a high proportion of repetitive tasks, data entry, and… elementary data processing, all activities that can be efficiently performed by automated systems,” according to the study.
The second factor is the continued rise in online shopping. “If people spend relatively more in e-commerce than in brick-and-mortar retail, there may be fewer salespeople needed in stores, but more people to move the goods and more needs in warehouses,” Chui said. Due in part to the e-commerce boom, the researchers predict that the transportation services category will see 9 percent job growth by 2030.
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Third, as Americans age, people of different ages tend to have different spending patterns. According to Chui, this could result in demand for certain jobs falling and demand for others — such as healthcare — rising.
“This applies to all professions, from nursing to surgeons and radiologists,” he said. Fourth, despite the upswing in US manufacturing, productivity gains could mean the industry needs fewer workers than it used to. “You will need fewer people but with more skills,” he said.
The job losses caused by artificial intelligence could result in some low-paid workers moving into higher-paying positions
The extent to which these changes will affect the US workforce, positively or negatively, is debatable, according to Chui. It depends on the country’s ability to reskill vulnerable workers.
“The ‘glass-is-half-empty’ variant is that the people most affected by these shifts are some of the lower-paid workers in the economy,” he said, adding, “The ‘ The ‘glass-is-half-full’ variant is that by retraining them they could take higher-paying jobs. If we can make the labor market work by facilitating these transitions, that’s really only an advantage.”
While Chui is confident that the US can make this transition, it will require significant investment from businesses, schools and governments. In addition to educating workers, the US could also benefit from a “skills-based labor market” in which a worker’s specific skills are valued as much, if not more, than their college degree during the hiring process.
“There was a time when the vast majority of workers in the United States worked in agriculture,” he said, and years later far more people worked in factories, for example. But we didn’t have 50 percent unemployment. We have always been able to do this in the past. It’s new challenges, but if you’re an optimistic American, you say we can do it.”
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