Digitisation Challenges Far Fewer Jobs in the OECD Than Expected

In the next two decades, nine per cent of current jobs in the OECD countries (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) will be technically automatable by progressing digitisation – significantly less than has been feared. This is the result of a new study carried out by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), which for the first time analysed the automation risk of jobs in 21 OECD countries based on a task-based approach. Despite far fewer jobs being automatable, the study shows that low-qualified employees are under stronger pressure to adapt. A great demand for advanced training and retraining emerges.

The ZEW study indicates that the automation potential varies among the 21 analysed OECD countries. While twelve per cent of jobs are automatable in Germany and Austria, the figure for Korea is six per cent. The automation potential depends, for example, on the investment volume in information and communication technologies (ICT), the degree of communication intensity in work organisation, and the education level.

Automation risk of jobs has been overestimated

The lower number of automatable jobs compared to other studies is the result of the ZEW researchers using the task-based approach instead of the so far widely used occupation-based approach. "Machines do not tend to replace professions as such but rather certain tasks at the workplace," says Dr. Ulrich Zierahn, Senior Researcher at ZEW and one of the study's authors. "Prior studies overestimate the automation risk because employees in jobs which have been classified as automatable often perform tasks that are difficult to perform by machines." The results do, however, show a significantly higher automation potential for low-qualified employee groups. Nevertheless, the expected potential is far from causing large-scale job losses.

"Job cuts can be avoided as long as employees, by use of advanced training or retraining, are able to fulfil an increasing number of tasks that complement the machine performance," says ZEW researcher Ulrich Zierahn. "The threat of 'technological unemployment' is therefore often overestimated." After all, new technologies also have the potential to create jobs. This is particularly true for those sectors developing new technologies, and for those enhancing their competitiveness by use of these technologies.

For more information please contact

Dr. Ulrich Zierahn, Phone +49(0)621/1235-280, E-mail zierahn@zew.de