Long before the emergence of ChatGPT and other AI tools threatening to take over our jobs, technological advancements have altered the way people work, making some occupations disappear, while others emerged. Did you know, for example, that people used to work as living alarm clocks before actual alarm clocks became a thing? “Knocker uppers”, as they were called, would walk around in industrial England, wielding a long stick with which they’d tap on workers’ doors to wake them in time for their shifts. There also used to be “computers” long before the arrival of personal computers. They were persons performing mathematical calculations, a service that is no longer required today.
So which jobs might be next? Each year, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes its Occupational Employment Projections - a report that's looking at the U.S. labor market as a whole for the next 10 years, projecting changes in employment by occupation and revealing which jobs are most at risk from automation or other technological and societal shifts. In its latest edition covering the 2022-2032 period, the BLS identified four occupational groups that are projected to lose jobs over the next decade: office and administrative support occupations, production occupations and sales and related occupations as well as occupations in farming, fishing and forestry.
As the following chart shows, cashiers, who are at risk of being replaced by self-checkout, are projected to see the biggest drop in employment over the next decade with 348,100 fewer jobs in 2032 than in 2022. Other jobs high on the list are secretaries, office clerks and customer service representatives, with each of these occupations expected to see employment decline by more than 150,000 jobs until 2032. When looking at relative employment changes, word processors and typists (-39 percent) and watch and clock repairers (-30 percent) are most at risk of losing their jobs, with other relatively rare occupations also high on the list.
