The AI Paradox and How Robots Are Making Work More Human

Over the next decade, a great wave of technological change will wash through the economy, transforming the nature of work and the shape of the labor market.

We (Oxford Economics) collaborated with Cisco to study the implications of these trends on jobs over the next decade.

Our results are based on a brand-new, multi-layered modeling framework, that enables us to simulate the real-world dynamics of technological change and its interaction with the world of work.

We found that 6.5 million US workers will have to seek out a new profession over the next decade.

Workers in transport, lower-level manufacturing, and agriculture jobs will face a difficult time.

Meanwhile, we see new jobs emerging in other areas, such as computing, management, and media, as well as in healthcare and sales.

The Oxford Economics Skills Matching Model is used to help us simulate the job-moves workers will make in response to a shift in the nature of work.

What emerges are signs the US is facing a significant reskilling challenge.

There is an acute ICT skills shortfall to overcome and, paradoxically, as technology becomes more capable it is "human skills" that explain much of the gap between today's workforce and the needs of the future.

This study also goes beyond existing efforts to identify the jobs at risk of automation to forecast where new jobs will be created. In doing so, it answers vital questions: Which jobs will be automated and what will those employees do?