Ronald J. Hansen

The Republicazcentral.com

The Phoenix area could be among the hardest hit by the loss of low-skill jobs that pay living wages.

Many low- and medium-skill occupations, especially in construction, are at high risk of automation.

Over the next three years, the Phoenix area is projected to lose more than 2,000 low-skilled jobs that pay a living wage, according to a USA TODAY analysis of the nation's evolving workforce.

The job losses in the Phoenix area mostly likely will be in construction-related jobs, which are giving way to prefabricated work done at factories and assembled with fewer people at construction sites.

The USA TODAY analysis projects the Phoenix area will lose about 9 percent of the Valley's 22,000 good-paying, low-skill positions to automation through 2017.

Because of the projected losses, compared with small gains elsewhere in the country, the Phoenix area ranks 124th out of the 125 metro areas examined, USA TODAY found.

G. Edward Gibson Jr., director of the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment at Arizona State University, said the changes are already happening in the Phoenix area.

"The advent of technology like building-information modeling gave us the ability to model a project before we ever built it," Gibson said. "You still have plumbers, but they're working in factories on modules."

The Phoenix area, now with just under 2 million jobs, will gain an estimated 45,000 low-skill jobs of all types that don't pay living wages by 2017. Nearly three-quarters of those jobs are at high risk of being automated, according to the USA TODAY report. The Tucson area is expected to add nearly 10,000 low-skill jobs by 2017, with 71 percent at high risk of automation.

About 34 percent of all current jobs in both markets are considered low-skilled.

Nationally, five out of the six fastest-growing jobs in the nation are in low-skill services, such as fast-food workers and retail sales. About 3 percent of those jobs currently pay living wages, and most of them are at high risk of being automated, experts say.

The employment trends suggest the continued erosion of the construction industry in the Phoenix area. Statewide, employment in construction has already fallen to 1994 levels.

All of the most-endangered low-skill jobs in the Phoenix area are in construction, USA Today found. These include drywall installers, stucco masons and insulation workers, jobs that paid on average more than $14 an hour in 2013 and are dominated by workers under 55 years old.

Gibson said skilled construction workers, such as welders, remain in short supply and high demand.

Many other jobs are also imperiled by technology. Those who do data entry, woodworkers and cabinetmakers — all considered middle-skill jobs — are also virtually certain to face near-term automation, USA TODAY found. High-skilled workers face relatively little threat of automation at the moment.