What skills and abilities can automation technologies replicate and what does it mean
for workers?
New evidence
This paper exploits novel data on the degree of automatability of approximately 100
skills and abilities collected through an original survey of experts in AI, and link
them to occupations using information on skill and ability requirements extracted
from O*NET. Similar to previous studies, this allows gauging the number of jobs potentially
affected by automation and the workers who are most at risk of automation. The focus
on the automatability of skills and abilities as opposed to entire occupations permits
a direct assessment of the share of highly automatable and bottleneck tasks in each
occupation. The study finds that thanks to advances in AI and robotics, several high-level
cognitive skills can now be automated. However, high-skilled occupations continue
to be less at risk of automation because they also require skills and abilities that
remain important bottlenecks to automation. Furthermore, jobs at highest risk of automation
will not disappear completely, as only 18 to 27% of skills and abilities required
in these occupations are highly automatable. Rather, the organisation of work will
change and workers in these jobs will need to retrain, as technologies replace workers
for several tasks.
Available from December 13, 2022
In series:OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papersview more titles