Nearly every job in Australia is set to undergo transformation due to technological advancements, according to a recent federal government report. The report published in August makes it abundantly clear that generative artificial intelligence (AI) will have a huge impact on the workforce. As certain roles become obsolete, many will be augmented by this technology.
Barrenjoey’s report uncovers this shocking statistic. The truth is, only one in 1,000 Australian jobs has a good chance of staying completely insulated from technology and AI. This highlights an amazing trend occurring in the employment environment. In Australia, half of all jobs are at “medium-to-high augmentation” risk from the pace of technological change. At the same time, one in three jobs is at risk of being entirely automated.
Johnathan McMenamin heads up the economic forecasts team at Barrenjoey. He helped co-author the report and tells me the findings are “profoundly important.” He stresses that workers need to get on board with these tech advances if they want to succeed in the new workforce landscape.
The numbers indicate that it’s very broad-based, McMenamin stated. “It’s going to affect the way we work right across the workplace.”
The report identifies five industries with the highest share of workers likely to be affected by automation and technological change: insurance, hotels and restaurants, beverages, consumer staples, and food products. Those results estimate nearly 10.9 percent of the workforce are at a high risk of replacement. Moreover, 22.3 percent are at a medium risk of losing their jobs. More than 7 percent of humans are very much exposed to augmentation due to rapid technological trend. Simultaneously, 38.4 percent of renters live with medium exposure.
“In particular, McMenamin wants to highlight a change in how we are exposed to technology. ‘Now professionals are more exposed to technology, whereas previously it was machine operators and labourers and clerical people,’ he explained. ‘Now it’s moving into a newer group.’”
Even as people worry about AI-related job displacement, McMenamin argues that alarmist predictions of widespread unemployment are overblown. “We think that the threat to the workforce isn’t through a mass unemployment phase,” he remarked. “This isn’t a doomsday piece of research that you might have seen in some other instances, but it’s a more balanced outcome that we’re expecting for the workforce.”
The Barrenjoey report demonstrates that technological augmentation delivers more productivity and overall outcomes than most industries. “That means that we are more geared towards augmentation than we are towards substitution,” McMenamin added.
He continued to draw parallels from the Industrial Revolution, IT revolution, and other past advancements. He testified that generative AI is a general-purpose technology, set to upend the labor market as computers and the internet once did.
Everyone thinks doomsday, he said. So, I think ultimately what we know is that it’s productivity that drives these rising living standards.
The report finds that tasks considered the most substitutable largely set are routine in nature. McMenamin noted, “The things that are most substitutable are those things that are very routine. These are tasks and skills that we’ve been replacing for a long period of time.”
Looking ahead, he predicts occupations at the highest risk of substitution will be fully replaced. Some will slowly exit the labor force entirely. “What will happen is those substitutable occupations will either completely transform in terms of what they look like, or you’ll see their role in the workforce just fade over time,” he said.
