47% at Risk

You see the “47%” figure floating around a lot, refering to how many jobs the economy could lose to technology. Here’s where it comes from – an Oxford study entitled The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?

The authors examine how susceptible jobs are to computerisation, by implementing a novel methodology to estimate the probability of computerisation for 702 detailed occupations, using a Gaussian process classifier. Based on these estimates, they examine expected impacts of future […] According to their estimates, about 47 per cent of total US employment is at risk. They further provide evidence that wages and educational attainment exhibit a strong negative relationship with an occupation’s probability of computerisation.