Millennials the First Generation to Lose Jobs to Automation, Experts Predict

A lot of people studying labor automation predicts that the total number of jobs today may not keep up with population growth unlike what we have seen in the past, even the bare minimum. However, recent job prospects will likely get worse for those between the ages of 18 to 34 right now as jobs nowadays are becoming easier to automate.

According to Economical Millennial, increasing industrial efficiency allows robots and other duty-specific machines to perform the work of 100 factory workers with an average of about 23 workers in 2017. The loss of these industrial positions in the past were more than offset by the rising service industry.

Today, even the service industry positions are being taken by machines, leaving little else for the younger generation to do.

Researchers from Oxford University have postulated that almost half of the jobs in the US could already be in jeopardy due to automation within the next 20 years. The jobs aren't going to disappear overnight. If they are already leading to businesses needing to hire fewer people to meet their staffing needs.

Two decades ago, true labor automation has largely been confined to the heavy industry. According to IB Times, it's an entirely new concept to weld vehicle parts, and self-serve kiosks are almost like vending machines. Labor efficiency had improved considerably since the middle part of the century. However, new jobs have appeared to replace them. The internet was still in its infancy and was mainly used to find few information about interests.

Now, the Internet has put the world at our fingertips. Sadly, this has also eliminated a lot of jobs in the process. For instance, companies like Amazon can provide their services to anyone in the US. Normally, they would need around 14-million people to do that, but they only use around 269,000 people for services.

Wal-Mart and Target even have options to go through the check-out lane. Only one person in the lanes do the work of 8-12 people on a regular day. If these retailers get their hands on machines that can stock shelves with close to the accuracy of a human, we may see the removal of positions that we can potentially have.

According to VOA Times, these include clerk cashier, stocker, customer service representative, and entry-level support. This is very likely the future that we may see in the next couple of decades. 

Millennials will likely bear the effects of what started off as a drop-off in recent hiring trends compared to workforce population. Those who are older may even be able to ride this out into retirement. However, with people working into the advance age of electronics, there are an increasing lack of positions given that machines are slowly being able to take over our jobs.