We should all become personal trainers

Telemarketers are only going to get more annoying

via Flickr: ‘Hardcore Stormies Hit The Gym’ by W_Minshull (ACC).

The Economist article, ‘automation and anxiety’, first caught my attention on the severity of automation. Drawing upon a study on how susceptible jobs are to future computerisation, the article found if you are dentist, fitness instructor or Vicar — congratulations! There is a less than 0.01% chance a bot will succeed you.

While we can all be relieved machines will not be delivering the sermon, other professions are not nearly as safe. Real estate sales agents are 86% likely to be computerised, while retail sales agents are 92% likely, accountants and auditors 94% likely and telemarketers are a staggering 99% likely to automated. Hallelujah! Telemarketers are only going to get more annoying.

There is even a 55% chance commercial pilots will be taken over by automation and, surprisingly, actors will be competing, with a 37% chance of automation.

The stats are enough to give anybody stage fright. More recently, the McKinsey Global Institute reported the shift to automation will cost ‘800 million jobs by 2030’. To crunch that number, approximately one fifth of worldwide workers are said to be impacted. Wealthier countries are to be most effected, with a third of the workforce potentially having to retrain.

According to McKinsey, developing or poorer countries are less vulnerable, having fewer funds to invest in automation. Jobs that rely on human interaction, such as lawyers, doctors and bar staff, are more likely to be protected, while machine operators and food workers are the most at risk.

In the United States, 39 to 79 million jobs are predicted to be lost in the coming decade. Though 20 million displaced jobs are said to be easily transferrable to other sectors, a huge employment gap will still be left.

Productivity is so rapidly developing, the human workforce is becoming the least productive chain in the cog. Not only this, employing someone in the Western world requires sick leave, in-work entitlements and a minimum pay packet. Clearly machines have the luxury of not needing any of this.

Basic income is both a pragmatic and plausible option to offset the looming jobs draught. Whether you think the McKinsey report is sensationalist or not, there are and will be transitions in the labour market. During the transition to other industries, and to soften the blow of potentially long-term unemployment, basic income ensures sustained consumer spending.

By giving individuals a personal allowance to freely spend; they can retrain, delve back into education, be more relaxed about working fewer hours and possibly progress their own business plans. Not everyone is going to be displaced. While it seems all doom and gloom, mass automation will grant opportunities in a new kind of economy (particularly if you are good with computers).

Elon Musk told the World Government Summit, universal basic income “will be necessary”. Before we all become personal trainers, governments must seize the opportunity to make automation a blessing not a curse.

The opportunity: to trial, test and roll out basic income.

Luke Brett, editor of Basic Income Britain.