Why is WorkForce Central studying the potential impacts of artificial intelligence and automation?

In workforce development, it’s one of those topics that keeps us up at night. Futurists and authors like Martin Ford have warned us for years about the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the “threat of a jobless future” — that by 2030, 400 million workers worldwide could be displaced by automation. We know certain occupations will be (and have already been) made obsolete by machines, artificial intelligence and the internet.

But we also know there may be opportunities for workers to move to higher-paying jobs and away from low-wage, low-skill jobs in this new era if we work with our partners in K-12, post-secondary education, economic development and industry to start talking about and planning for the future.

What’s the upshot of this report?

What we found is somewhat concerning — in Pierce County, we have work to do to prepare our economy and workforce for the future. Based on our current distribution of jobs, we’re at risk of losing a huge chunk of work to automation and computerization. That’s because we have a disproportionate share of retail sales, hospitality and food service jobs and not as many coveted computer, tech, and white collar jobs as our neighbors to the north and south (King and Thurston counties, respectively).

As the report notes, “The distribution (in Pierce County) is very much in line with observations of the hollowing out of middle risk and middle-income jobs. In Pierce County we see that 47 percent of occupations are estimated to be at a high risk of automation (141,682 occupations over 75 percent).”

Part of our problem: We know that computer occupations are among the most insulated from the threat of automation, because those workers will be writing the code and programming the machines, so to speak. And we’re churning out a growing number of post-secondary awards in computer-related programs in Pierce County, earned by people who want to work those jobs.

So the challenge confronting our region is not necessarily the lack of talent for the types of jobs associated with automation and computerization, nor do we have any apparent dearth of pipelines to these careers, nor do we lack models of education or employer partnerships: Our barrier is a lack of demand for these jobs regionally.