The recent report from the U.S. Bureau of Statistics shows hat there is a 4.9 percent decline in the unemployment rate of the country. Although not much, it is still positive when compared to a recent study conducted at Oxford University saying that 47 percent of the jobs in America will be eliminated within the next 25 years.

The study was conducted by Dr. Michael Osborne, a professor at Oxford University's Machine Learning Research Group in the Department of Engineering Science. It looked closely at more than 700 job types in different industries in the United States keeping into consideration the skills required for the job and the tasks that workers perform in the job.

They found out that a great number of jobs, especially in logistics, administrative, and transportation, are in high risk of getting eliminated because of automation. Even jobs in the service industry are in grave danger of being given to machines in the future.

Dr. Osborne also added that the pace of how technology advances is very fast and those who have a very low skillset will either lose their jobs to robots or be moved to tasks with low possibility of computerization. These are the jobs that require creativity and social intelligence. In order to keep themselves relevant, Dr. Osborne suggested that workers need to step up and teach themselves new skills.

At present, blue collar jobs are the ones which are highly at risk. However, even the white collar jobs are not safe according to the Economist. With machine learning and artificial intelligence getting sophisticated, machines will be able to make financial and medical decision based on thousands, even millions, of data. If this happens, what's the use of a human financial analyst or medical expert? Moreover, automation means lesser instances of fraud and misdiagnosis. On the other hand, machines will be more efficient for a lesser price.

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Topics Employment, Unemployment