Automation, robotics and advances in technologies have led to the extinction of several jobs. Jobs like that of Elevator operator have all but disappeared in recent times.
Youngsters entering the job market this year may be discovering that a nexus of forces including lockdowns and pandemic have led corporate leaders to review their plans for future of workplace.
There are also several academic studies that are looking at the future of jobs and careers. The Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago released in May 2020 projected that 42% of layoffs caused by the pandemic will be permanent. A while back, a report from Oxford University‘s Martin School about the Future of Employment ranked 702 occupations “according to their probability of computerization – from least- to most-computerisable – within the next decade or two. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics also analyzes employment data related to job growth and decline that can indicate job segments that are shrinking.
A review of these and other reports highlight 20 or more Jobs that are most likely to be gone by 2030.
Travel and Transportation sector
1. Taxi driver
In most major metros around the world, ride-share apps like Uber, Lyft (and other regional apps) have minimized the public depended on Taxi services. In a 2016 op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Steven Greenhouse predicted that the rise of automated cars will erase 5 million American jobs. According to Wikipedia, New York City’s coveted Taxi medallion was valued at around $600,000 in 2010 and peaked at over $1,000,000 in 2013. As of 2020, one can now purchase a medallion for less than $150,000.
In many cities around the world, cabbies have given up the fight against ride-share aggregators and are joining the enemy – becoming Uber drivers themselves.
2. Dispatchers
When is the last time you phoned a Taxi company requesting a ride? As Taxi services around the globe continue to struggle to compete against ride-share, the job of ‘Dispatcher’ is going extinct.
People are no longer calling Taxi dispatchers, but rather use their app to book rides. It is unlikely that in 10-15 years people will call another human to book or schedule a ride. 50 years, it’s hard to imagine that young people will be able to comprehend a time when people had to call another person to schedule a ride.
3. Bus and Truck drivers
Industry leaders have been following trends in autonomous and self-driving vehicles. While it is unlikely that all professional Truck and Bus drivers will be out of a job in the next decade, the number of new drivers entering the industry will certainly reduce as fleets of vehicles are converted to include autonomous vehicles.
While the technology is being demonstrated for consumers’ cars, and automotive, the real promise is in commercial automobiles – Buses and Trucks. Self-driving electric buses are already a reality on the streets of Switzerland. Large supply chain operations like UPS and FedEx are already piloting self-driving trucks (re: UPS self-driving delivery trucks are on the road).
4. Air traffic controller
Air traffic control specialists are responsible for the safe, orderly, and expeditious flow of air traffic in the global air traffic control system. It is likely that in the next few decades, future technology will make the controller more of a systems manager overseeing decisions made by automated systems and manually intervening to resolve situations not handled well by the computers. Their role is unlikely to be completely eliminated by automation.
Tim Boyle/Getty Images
5. Travel agents
When is the last time you went to a travel agent to book a trip? Websites like Google Flights allow users to search for flights and options quickly and for free. Even corporate trip booking, where travel agents would help with specialized advice, is now done on specialized portals like Concur or Amex Travel.
Perhaps the last bastion for travel agents is in niche areas where they can provide personalized services like booking for large events or specialized experience focused tours and other value added services.
Automation of Professional Services
6. Data entry, and computer operator
Since the advent of computing, humans have been involved in inputting data into computers, starting with punch card operators to data entry keyer who enter data from paper based forms.
This area has seen tremendous amount of automation, system to system integrations, optical character readers (OCR) and other techniques. Many companies that hired data entry operators in the past have been outsourcing Business Process Operation (BPO) service providers. Even BPO service providers have been pushing for automating services using technologies like Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Industry experts predict that there the requirement for data entry operators will shrink by 70-80% in the next decade.
Another related job is that of Computer operators who manage computing infrastructure and servers. They monitor systems and deal with error messages, and trouble shoot systems. Even these jobs continue to be automated with automated monitoring software that can be managed with fewer people remotely.
7. Typists and Stenographers
Even a decade ago, it was common senior executives and corporate leaders to employ personal assistants who would take dictation and draft out letters and correspondence. With advance in speech-to-text and voice recognition technologies, these roles have been automated to a great extent.
A stenographer is skilled in the transcription of speech (for example, a secretary who takes dictation) while typist is a person who types, a clerical worker who writes letters, etc, using a typewriter or computer.
Smartphones now have apps that allow users to dictate and transcribe notes with voice commands. Many companies have either downsized these roles or expect their executives to roll-up their sleeves and use computing technologies to perform these drafting tasks themselves. The few roles that exist are for very specialized transcription like that of a court reporter or specialized editor.
8. Bill and Account Collectors
Many companies have also outsourced their Bill collection to Business Process Operation (BPO) service providers. There is a global consolidation of collection agencies and the BPOs have been automating the bill-collection service with software programs that can perform the same repetitive function of human collectors
9. Call center and Telemarketers
According to industry reports, telemarketing and call center jobs that tend to be highly repetitive jobs are perfect candidates for automation. Contact centers are experiencing a variety of automations from technologies spanning Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Auto dialers, Robo-calling and Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled Chatbots
A year ago, Google showed off its Assistant engaging in a humanlike conversation with someone at a hair salon and a small restaurant. In the video that vent viral, Google CEO Sundar Pichai also explains the art-of-the possible at Google I/O.
10. Meter readers
Utility service companies have traditionally employed an army of meter-readers, humans who walk around neighborhood reading and recording the consumption water, electric or gas from meters.
Utilities around the world have been adopting automatic meter reading (AMR) technology coupled with smart-meters to automatically collect consumption, diagnostic, and status data from water meter or energy metering devices (gas, electric). Using AMR, data from smart meters can be transferred to a central database for billing, troubleshooting, and analyzing.
11. Interpreter and translator
Interpreters and translators are always in demand in multinational organizations and in government interactions where leaders have to communicate across cultures with distinct languages.
Computer aided translation services have been evolving at a fast pace. Voice recognition technologies with ubiquitous access to smartphones have speeded up the commercial and consumer adoption of these technologies.
While there will still be a need for human translators with linguistic and cross-cultural skills for high profile events, consumers and globetrotters may find that use of translation apps should suffice for day-to-day interactions.
12. Bank Teller
When is the last time you stood in a line at a bank to withdraw some cash from a bank Teller?
Consumers around the world have been skipping the line and using ATMs to make withdrawals, check balances, and deposit checks and cash. The rise of mobile banking apps and digital wallets have further minimized the need for human tellers. Banks are starting to re-design their branches to reduce or eliminate tellers and cashiers and are focused on relationship management and value added advisory services for their customers.
13. Tax Preparers
Most countries around the world ask residents to file tax returns annually; and this is an exercise fraught with anxiety. During the tax filing season, individuals used to queue up at Tax preparer’s offices with their income details. These trained professionals would ‘compute’ the various taxes, deductions and other variables and help the individual fill their tax forms.
Individuals have begun to use Tax preparation software themselves, at least for filing simple tax returns. Even CPAs and accountants use advanced Tax preparation software to assist them with complex computations and to keep updated on periodic changes to tax regulations.
14. Financial Advisors
The financial services industry is being disrupted by digitization. Stock trading and computations driven by complex algorithms and real-time networks are used to manage portfolios. Such software is also used by online brokerages to offer tailored investment advice to clients. Many of these services were traditionally offered by financial advisors.
While online financial advisory services and self-service mode may meet the needs of individuals with small portfolios, High Net-Worth (HNI) individuals may still require advice tailored to their portfolio holdings. It is a matter of time before AI and Machine Leaning enabled software systems begin advising HNI individuals with complex financial portfolios and needs.
15. Tutors, Trainers and Educators
2020 has been the year of ‘digital everything.’ With entire countries and communities going under lockdowns classrooms migrated online enabled by Zoom, access to WiFi, smartphones and tablets. There are lessons in remote everything that middle-schoolers will carry for life (link).
Online tutoring services had been taking off even before the pandemic and has seen a huge uptake. In a recent working paper, the Brookings Institution examines randomized field experiments of K-12 tutoring in high-income countries. The report also points to the proven capability of well-targeted tutoring programs to reduce long-standing educational disparities that have been aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Commercial ventures and startups across the globe have also jumped on the bandwagon by creating mobile-app driven tutoring services that offer streaming and curated tutoring services for students around the world. This trend has led to the diminishing need for one-on-one tuitions and teachers.
Automation of Manufacturing and Core sectors
16. Printing and Publishing jobs
Many in the industry, including this Washington Post writer, are predicting that the decline has been speeded up by the recent pandemic and lockdowns. “A tsunami of layoffs, cutbacks, furloughs and closures has washed over newsrooms across the United States over the past month — a time, ironically, when readership and viewership is surging with consumers in search of reliable information about the virus.”
The traditional printing and publishing industry has been under threat of digitization for the past couple of decades. Digital Technology has brought publishing to the masses, but has also been the cause of its decline.
Publishers, writers and editors who have been trained in the old ways of producing books and newspapers are likely to find themselves out of a job in the near future. Similarly, jobs that involve Binding, finishing and assembling print reading materials are being done by machines.
17. Coal miner
A generation ago, the world was much more dependent on coal and entire towns came up around coal mining centers around the world.
Coal is a finite resource that is rapidly dwindling as the world embraces cleaner energy sources. The mining industry has been in decline for the past few decades and we are not likely to see a need for an army of coal miners.
18. Manufacturing workers
Manufacturing jobs have been declining for the past few decades, as companies automate routine tasks while consolidating production to leverage economies of scale.
19. Parking enforcement
We have been seeing innovative uses of Drones that are being used for land surveying, delivering packages and even for military uses. Police forces around the world are experimenting with drones to support law-enforcement.
Parking enforcement is perhaps the last bastion of policing that even police personnel abhor. Flying robots and drones are already beginning to take on some “meter maid” roles as this pilot in Kenya’s Nairobi shows. Nairobi police is trying to use drones for parking fees enforcement.
20. Restaurant servers and waiters
Fast-food joints have eliminated the need for waiters though it is still a standard protocol at dine-in restaurants. While consumers like the personal touch and human service offered at restaurants, it comes at a cost. Restaurants in India, China and other countries are experimenting with robotic servers.
While robot-waiters are a novelty, the trend is likely to catch on post-pandemic as restaurants try to minimize risk of human contact while enforcing social distancing. AI based techniques also continue to evolve at a fast pace as cognitive ability of robots improve and they are effectively able to liaison with customers.
The above list highlights some jobs and job categories that are likely to vanish due to automations. While the list of jobs vary across academic reports, researchers quoted agree that the job categories that are most likely to be automated include
- Jobs that are repetitive and pay low wages
- Jobs that have few barriers to entry and require low skill or education
- Jobs that don’t require a lot of creative or social abilities