There’s a fairly good chance a computer could one day be doing your job instead of you, according to a recent paper out of Oxford College.

The working paper, put out in August and complete with the fun title, “The Future of Employment: How Susceptible are Jobs to Computerisation?“, comes from the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology and is not available online.

But the MIT Technology Review obtained a copy and writes that the study found 45 percent of 702 jobs reviewed could potentially be computerized over the next 20 years.

The piece has more information about how the author’s expect this shift to occur, as well as what threatened workers should do to prepare. You should go read it.

Here’s the entire abstract out of Oxford (emphasis ours):

“We examine how susceptible jobs are to computerisation. To assess this, we begin by implementing a novel methodology to estimate the probability of computerisation for 702 detailed occupations, using a Gaussian process classifier. Based on these estimates, we examine expected impacts of future computerisation on US labour market outcomes, with the primary objective of analysing the number of jobs at risk and the relationship between an occupation’s probability of computerisation, wages and educational attainment. According to our estimates, about 45 percent of total US employment is at risk. We further provide evidence that wages and educational attainment exhibit a strong negative relationship with an occupation’s probability of computerisation.”

So in summary: Nearly half of jobs face some threat of being computerized, and people in such jobs will struggle for money in the meantime, according to the paper.

That’s worrying news for U.S. workers, many of whom are already hurting for a pay hike. The bottom 70 percent of the income ladder have seen their inflation-adjusted wages fall significantly since 2007, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, and that trend shows little sign of slowing down.

Indeed, the worry over automation and its effect on the job market is an old one in capitalism. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones recently wrote a piece called, “Welcome Robot Overlords, Please Don’t Fire Us?” (another good read), in which he points to diverse examples of jobs that could be affected — driver, journalists, even doctors.

Yet as Drum points out, Nobel Prize-winning economist (and New York Times columnist) Paul Krugman isn’t quite convinced robots are the real threat to workers. The distinction is reserved, he has said, for the eternal struggle over the money pot between capital and labor, a battle labor has been losing since the 1970s.

(h/t io9)

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  • 10. Politics

    Predictions about our robot overlords aside, we will probably never have a robot in the White House. “I think a lot of government jobs may someday be threatened, but probably not those of politicians,” says Ford. A robotic president would require human-like artificial intelligence of a kind that experts may never be able to develop, he points out. And even if they could, the people who kiss babies, give speeches, and make laws for a living will probably retain their gigs.<br><br>

    “The best answer for why we won’t have robotic politicians is that the politicians would never allow it,” says Ford. “Among workers, politicians really have a unique level of power when it comes to protecting their own interests.” However, their support staff–government-paid analysts, auditors, and accountants–won’t necessarily be as safe since much of all of the work they do could be automated some day.

  • 9. Lawyers, Financial Analysts, Creative Knowledge Workers

    Creative knowledge workers–those who have to think creatively for a living–aren’t going to be phased any time soon, either. Take lawyers, for instance. “Much of the core work involves value judgment: what is good, what is bad what is desirable or not,” says Subramani, who points to the opinions judges write as an example. “It’s more than just logical reasoning based on evidence.” Other creative knowledge workers include architects and financial analysts. But those doing non-creative knowledge work, like paralegals who search for and gather data won’t fare so well. “Doing anything that involves consistently executing a rote task–is likely to be where robots are likely to excel,” Subramini adds.

  • 8. Media

    Though content-stripping bots can already cut and assemble simple news stories, and “content farms” are spreading like pop-up stores, writers, editor, and designers are likely to be needed well into the future to help keep the Internet running. “Yes, there are very good ‘off-the-shelf’ programs like WordPress to ‘automate’ how a website gets published,” Kantor notes. “But we need lots of real people to input data, design pages, and write and edit material so that people actually want to read it.” Television channels and magazines will also continue to need to employ people for similar reasons–not just to report on stories, but to design graphics, manage editorial and production teams, and so on.

  • 7. Human Care

    Robots won’t advance that quickly in industries where a human touch is preferable, even if it isn’t entirely necessary, as Subramani points out; in situations where interacting with a machine might be upsetting instead of soothing, humans won’t be pushed out. “For instance, I find it hard to believe that we will have funeral home employees replaced by robots, even though robots may be more efficient,” Subramani says. “I think industries like daycare are reasonably immune for the same reasons.”

  • 6. Most Health Care

    If you’re a doctor, nurse, or physical therapist–working in a healthcare job that requires a lot of direct interaction with patients–there’s probably no need to be looking over your shoulder for a machine version of yourself, says Ford. All the same, he cautions, “there are certainly a lot of areas where automation is developing–like hospital delivery and pharmacy robots. The Japanese are even working on automating some nursing and elder-care functions.” In fact, he adds, systems like IBM’s Watson may even start making diagnoses some day. And radiology jobs–already off-shored to India much of the time, where doctors read scans at much lower cost–are also likely to be largely automated eventually.

  • 5. Environmental Think Tanks

    As the environmental problems brought on by global warming increase–and energy costs rise–more and more people will be needed to study and enact means by which businesses can reduce their carbon footprints. As Kantor points out, we’ll need workers who can measure carbon use, devise strategies to lower it, and guide implementation of those plans. “Lots of people up and down the supply chain will be needed to make such initiatives work–to decide what data to collect and how to collect it, to analyze it, and to figure out which changes to make,” she says.

  • 4. Primary And Secondary Education

    Since there’s no “profit motive that drives efficiency” when it comes to teaching at the primary and secondary levels, these kinds of jobs aren’t likely to be automated any time soon, as Ford notes. But college-level teaching? That might be endangered. “I think higher education will go increasingly online,” says Ford; he notes that six recent experiments found that college students enrolled in courses with machine-guided tutoring software performed just as well as their counterparts in traditional classes. “A few high-profile teachers will lecture huge numbers of students, and there are new software applications that can automate grading,” he says.

  • 3. Managing Automation

    Ironically, even robots needs managers. “Although there’s increasing automation in manufacturing plants in the US, there is a huge–and growing–need for workers who can manage the automation,” says Kantor. “The industry requires people who understand welding, for example, and can also calibrate, maintain, and run the computers that might be doing the welding.”

  • 2. Help Desks

    There is a trend to move help desks–for banks, software companies, and online stores, for instance–back into the U.S., especially in the southeast, where jobs are scarce, according to Kantor. “Increasingly, help desks are ‘on-shoring,'” she says, pointing out that Microsoft now has help centers all over the U.S, in places like North Dakota, Florida, and California. Why the move back? Thanks to the bad economy, hiring U.S. workers is less expensive than it used to be. What’s more, as Kantor notes, language and cultural barriers can make certain customers uncomfortable or impatient; many companies are betting that putting customers more at ease will be good for business. Could a help desk version of Siri be created? Sure, but it’s not likely going to be sophisticated enough to handle all the issues that could come up. When software and hardware need a Sherlock instead of a Siri, a problem-solving human is better than a bot.

  • 1. Wind And Solar Power

    These industries will provide jobs for plumbers, electricians, and construction people, particularly whenever a new power plant or wind farm has to be built. Now sure, parts–like solar panels–are likely to be made by automation. “But they’re hard to install by robot,” says Tana Kantor, Publisher of The Green Economy, a magazine that covers eco-conscious companies and business practices. “Each installation is different, and there is no way to automate or mechanize the process.” She adds, however, that while there will be plenty of work to be done in the development phase, not many people will be needed to maintain plants.