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Visualizing the Jobs Lost to Automation

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Jobs Lost to Automation

Visualizing the Jobs Lost to Automation

The employment landscape of the future will look very different than it does today.

While we’ve charted the automation potential of U.S. jobs before, today’s graphic from Henrik Lindberg perhaps tells the story more succinctly.

In plain black and white, it shows the jobs that exist today in contrast to the jobs that are expected to disappear as a result of automation in the workplace. Though, technically speaking, it is applying the probabilities of the widely-cited Frey & Osborne (2013) study to U.S. jobs as of 2016 to give an expected value to each job title.

A Different Landscape

In the near-future, many of today’s most common jobs may be changed profoundly. People working as retail salespersons, cashiers, fast food counter workers, and truck drivers will likely see opportunities in those fields dry up as automation takes place.

At the same time, jobs such as those in teaching and nursing are expected to stand the test of time, as they require empathy, creativity, and a human touch not yet available through machines. In the coming decades, it’s possible that these could even be professions that employ the most people overall.

Casualties of the Fall?

In the vastly different employment landscape of the future, the worry is that low income workers will have fewer opportunities available to them as technology comes into play.

The good news? Historically this has not been true. As an example, nearly 500 years ago, Queen Elizabeth I had a similar fear when she denied a patent for an automated knitting machine. The thought was that the machine would kill jobs, though eventually factories and companies adopted similar technologies anyways. With the lower prices, higher demand for knitted goods, and more capital for investment, jobs for factory weavers actually quadrupled in the coming years.

As we’ve seen over time, while machines destroy jobs, they also often create new ones.

Composition of U.S. Job Market over the Last 150+ Years

Jobs as a Percent

The bad news? It is now clear that agricultural jobs of the early 20th century were replaced with the white collar jobs of today. However, it is much more difficult to forecast out how some of the jobs of the future will be created, especially for low income workers.

The knitting example above certainly applies in some situations – but in others, it’s hard to say what will happen. For example, with millions of unemployed long-haul truck drivers, what roles will these people be taking in the future job market?

Even with costs of transportation and logistics going down, increased demand, and more capital to invest, it seems that there’s going to be a lengthy period of time where many of these people will have trouble finding work.

Do they join the company to help manage the many more trucks that are self-driving? It’s unlikely, and that is the part of the optimism about automation and future jobs that is the hardest to reconcile.

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Visualizing Internet Usage by Global Region

In this infographic, we map out internet usage by global region based on the latest data from the World Bank.

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Map showing internet usage by region.

Visualizing Internet Usage by Global Region

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Digital technologies have become an integral part of our daily lives, transforming communications, business, health, education, and more. Yet, billions of people around the world are still offline, and digital advancement has been uneven.

Here, we map internet usage by region based on data from the World Bank’s Digital Progress and Trends Report 2023.

Digitalization Has Been Uneven

According to the World Bank, between 2018 and 2022, the world gained 1.5 billion new internet users.

In 2020 alone, the share of the global population using the internet increased by 6% (500 million people), marking the highest jump in history. India, in particular, has seen high rates of adoption. For example, in 2018, only 20% of Indians used the internet. By 2022, this percentage had grown to more than 50%.

RegionIndividuals using the internet (% of population)
East Asia & Pacific74
Europe & Central Asia87
Latin America & the Caribbean76
Middle East & North Africa77
North America92
South Asia42
Sub-Saharan Africa34

However, the progress of digitalization has been uneven both within and across countries.

In 2022, one-third of the global population remained offline, with parts of Asia and Africa still experiencing very low rates of internet usage. For instance, more than half of businesses in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Senegal reportedly lack internet connection.

According to the World Bank’s report, when fast internet becomes available, the probability of an individual being employed increases by up to 13%, and total employment per firm increases by up to 22%. Moreover, firm exports nearly quadruple with the availability of fast internet. Across Africa, 3G coverage has been associated with a reduction in extreme poverty, with reductions of 10% seen in Senegal and 4.3% in Nigeria.

Curious to learn more about the internet? Check out this animated chart that shows the most popular web browsers since 1994.

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