Robots will steal human jobs in these states: Smart Asset

Workers on the assembly line replace the back covers of 32-inch television sets at Element Electronics in Winnsboro, South CarolinaChris Keane, Reuters

• Automation is a technology trend that will impact various sectors of economic life this century.
• Smart Asset, a financial technology company that provides online advice about personal finance decisions, recently released a study which calculated which states have jobs that are most vulnerable to automation. 
• They looked at Bureau of Labor Statistics and research studies done at Oxford University. 
• Smart Asset found that of the top 10 states with jobs most vulnerable to automation, three came from the Great Plains and six came from the South. 

Because of the rate at which technology is progressing, automation is a trend that will impact various sectors of economic life this century. In fact, automation is already creating anxiety as to how our economy will be structured going forward. 

According to The Guardian, 38% of U.S. jobs could be lost to automation in the next 15 years. The Janesville Gazette reports that a 2017 Pew Poll found that 72% of adults said they were worried about a future where robots and computers can perform human jobs. 

Smart Asset, a financial technology company that provides online advice about personal finance decisions, recently released a study which calculated which states have jobs that are most vulnerable to automation. 

Smart Asset’s methodology consisted of looking at employment data across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. and analyzing them from the two angles. First, they looked at total worker occupation data based on Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2017. Second, they looked at research studies done by Oxford University, namely “The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerization?” by Carl B. Frey and Michael A. Osborne, and analyzed the percent chance a specific occupation will be automated in a decade or two.  

Smart Asset said they “multiplied the number of jobs in each occupation by the chance they will be automated for each state,” and from there determined which states would have the highest percentage of jobs at risk. 

Smart Asset found that of the top 10 states with jobs most vulnerable to automation, three came from the Great Plains and six came from the South. 

Take a look below at the complete list of the 10 states where jobs are most vulnerable to the threat of automation.