Will we automate jobs faster than we create them?

The speed with which automation technologies are emerging today and the extent to which they could disrupt the world of work are largely without precedent. How big could the impact be on the world of work, and how rapidly will it be felt? Katy George explores these questions, drawing on a major new report from the McKinsey Global Institute.

Technological change continuously reshapes the workplace. However, the speed with which automation technologies are emerging today and the extent to which they could disrupt the world of work are largely without precedent. How big could the impact be on the world of work, and how rapidly will it be felt? Katy George shares the results of a McKinsey Global Institute analysis of the automation potential of the global economy. The study examined more than 2,000 work activities in detail, quantifying the amount of time spent on these activities and the technical feasibility of automating each of them by adapting currently demonstrated technology. The core findings are that the proportion of jobs that can be fully automated in the next decade using currently available technology is very small (less than 5%) but that automation will nonetheless affect almost every job—not just factory workers and clerks but landscape gardeners, dental lab technicians, fashion designers, insurance sales representatives, and CEOs. As a rule of thumb, about 60% of all jobs have at least 30% of activities that are technically automatable. On a global scale, the adaptation of currently demonstrated automation technologies could affect 49% of the world economy, or 1.1 billion employees and $12.7 trillion in wages. As part of this research into how well machines are able to perform key capabilities for the workplace, McKinsey Global Institute also modeled how quickly the technology could evolve to match or surpass human levels. Katy shares key implications for governments and business about the disruptive nature of automation and its potential consequences for the world of work drawn from the findings and explains how society can benefit from the very considerable improvements these automation technologies could bring, in the form of raised productivity, greater safety, and broad social progress—while at the same time mitigating the negative effects on employment.