Automation is coming after your job, Ohioans

From the Columbus Dispatch.

Nearly half of Ohio workers hold jobs that a University of Oxford study has identified as likely to be automated in the future, including tens of thousands of cashiers, truck drivers, fast-food workers and warehouse laborers.

In a 2013 study, researchers Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne rated 702 jobs on a scale from zero, meaning they can’t be automated, to one, meaning they certainly will be automated. Of those, 297 jobs rated a 0.7 or higher, meaning there is at least a 70 percent chance the jobs will face disruption from computerization and automation.

The researchers gave a higher likelihood of automation to lower-paid, repetitive jobs that require little or uncomplicated personal interaction and lower levels of education.

To gauge the potential effects of automation on Ohio’s employment, The Dispatch compared the high-risk jobs in the study with U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics surveys that show how many Ohioans hold them. As of March 2016, the last time the bureau released statewide job statistics, Ohio had 163,790 people engaged in food preparation and serving jobs, including fast-food jobs. There were 117,390 cashiers, 111,230 laborers and freight handlers, including warehouse workers, and 70,740 drivers of heavy trucks.

Adding up all of the jobs that are at least 70 percent at risk shows that about 2.5 million jobs in Ohio are at stake. Total employment in the state was about 5.5 million in December.

Taken together, the average pay of all of the Ohio workers in all 297 jobs rated as the most likely to be automated added up to nearly $83.6 billion in 2016, according to the labor bureau’s statistics. That includes 169,300 office clerks, secretaries and administrative assistants, 98,150 waiters and waitresses, and 61,590 bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks.

Conversely, about 1.3 million Ohioans work in 217 jobs that are rated the safest from automation. Teachers, nurses, home health aides, computer systems administrators and pharmacists all rate a 0.3 or lower. So do police officers, firefighters, child-care workers, medical assistants and electricians.

And there will be many more jobs that aren’t even on the list yet, said Jeff Spain, supervisor of workforce innovation at Columbus State Community College. The college, for example, has a new program training students for work as logistics engineering technicians, with skills that will increasingly be in demand as the region’s many warehouses continue to automate. The two-year degree combines training in how the supply chain works, problem-solving and information technology.

“The pick-and-pack person, their job is changing,” Spain said. “The function of it can mostly be automated. We have warehouses that are heavily automated, where the human component has been removed. That doesn’t take away the need for a human workforce.

To compete for the jobs that can’t be automated, Spain said, will mean gaining technical skills beyond high school and also focusing on a deeply human skill: communication.

At a conference in New Orleans last week for workforce experts from across the country, Spain said he kept hearing the same thing: “Advanced communication was the watchword people were saying. Workers have the technology, but they don’t have the inter-connectivity of people. At the college, we’ve embedded communication skills: It’s not just that I know how to use the internet of things, I know how to work with people.”

That jobs are vulnerable to automation is nothing new.

The state has shed more than a third of its manufacturing jobs, for example, since 2000. While some manufacturing jobs have come back since the recession ended, economists expect that number to slide over the long term.

Robots already help make cars and run around at Amazon distribution centers assisting workers filling orders.

Driverless vehicles, kiosks that can take orders at restaurants, electric and gas meters that no longer need to be read manually and computer programs that can quickly and easily do simple tax returns already are being put to work. Amazon has opened a grocery store in Seattle that has no cashiers.

Just last week, Kroger said it will introduce a “Scan, Bag, Go” system to some of its central Ohio stores in March that will eliminate the need for shoppers to go through checkout lines and interact with a cashier.

Shoppers use a wireless hand-held scanner to scan items as they shop or use their mobile phone via Kroger’s app. The app links to a credit card on file with Kroger and when the shopper leaves, the card is charged.

“Tasks are going to be automated or eliminated,” said David Staley, a futurist and an associate professor of history, design and educational studies at Ohio State University. The question is, “What does that do to the job? What does that do to the person?”

Staley said the real significant question is when it will happen.

The Oxford study doesn’t say whether a job will be automated today or 20 years from now.

“That’s the great unknown, the great uncertainty,” Staley said. “A lot of these technologies already exist. It is the speed at which (the jobs) are being eliminated, that is the big question. ... When capital becomes cheaper than labor, it will replace labor.”

In Gahanna, BeeHex Inc. is building 3D food printers that can make a pizza, decorate a cake or a cookie or crank out made-to-order nutrition bars. The key, said Ben Feltner, chief operating officer of the 2-year-old company, is to provide a machine that compares to the cost of a manual laborer and can take over a “mindless” task. That leaves people such as pastry chefs free to do something of higher value and difficulty than icing dozens of cookies the same way.

So, if the question is, ‘Do I hire more people or invest in this machine?’ it’s a no-brainer,” he said. “That’s why you’re seeing so much automation right now. Because the cost to produce the machine has come down so much and labor has come up, so they’re intersecting.”

Staley said there might come a day when a consumer’s ability to deal with actual employees in a store or restaurant may depend on wealth.

Those who can afford it will still go to a high-end restaurant with a wait staff while others will go to a fully-automated restaurant to eat, he said.

But it won’t stop there.

Even public defenders could be replaced by robots in court proceedings or trials some day, leaving only those with wealth and connections access to a human lawyer, he said.

More than a fifth of the state’s work force is in manufacturing and retail, two of the sectors most vulnerable to automation, said Ben Ayers, senior economist at Nationwide.

The situation may not be as bleak as some have suggested, he said.

“You can’t underestimate how adaptable the economy is,” he said.

Honda, for example, continues to add jobs in central Ohio even as it deploys more robots.

The threat of automation worries the Teamsters. Of the union’s 1.4 million national members, about 600,000 work behind the wheel.

“Trucking has been a very good middle-class lifestyle for those who are union members,” said Kara Deniz, a union spokeswoman. “The erosion of that is a little disconcerting. ... A lot of them don’t want to be computer programmers. They want to be truck drivers.”

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I surely hope the part about robotic public defenders for the poor doesn't come to fruition. That's just not right!