AI is here to steal your jobs. How women will be affected more than men

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming for your jobs. There is no denying it. And women have more reasons to worry. With the rise of automation and AI in the workforce, more women risk losing their jobs than men by the end of the decade, finds a new report by McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of the consultancy firm. The report published on Wednesday studies the labour market trends in the United States. By 2030 nearly a third of hours worked in the country could be automated, it says. Why women will be worst-affected According to the study, women are 1.5 times more likely needed to look for a new occupation than men in the coming years. But why? They are overrepresented in industries with lower-wage jobs, Bloomberg says quoting the report, and will be most impacted by automation. Among the jobs which will be most affected include customer service, sales office support, and food services. More and more industries are expected to adopt generative artificial intelligence such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. White-collar workers like lawyers, teachers, financial advisers, and architects will have to brace themselves for change. But according to McKinsey, the changes will be in the way jobs are carried out and not necessarily the loss of a large number of positions. It “probably won’t be that kind of catastrophic thing,” institute partner Michael Chui was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. But “it is going to change almost every job”. [caption id=“attachment_12925762” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Eighty per cent of working women are engaged in occupations that are at risk of being disrupted by AI as compared to 60 per cent of men, according to the Kenan-Flagler Business School. Pixabay[/caption] Another research from Goldman Sachs from March points to 15 occupations that are likely to be shaken up by the advent of AI including managerial roles, engineering and legal jobs. Eighty per cent of working women are in jobs that are at risk of being affected by AI, as compared to 60 per cent of men, according to the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. “The reason more women than men are exposed to AI automation is straightforward: A higher percentage of working women are in white-collar jobs (~70%) vs. blue-collar ones (~30%) while for men the ratio is roughly 50/50,” Fortune reports quoting Mark McNeilly, marketing professor and author of the study. According to Revelio Labs, a workplace analytics firm, some of the job posts affected by generative AI tools include interpreters, programmers, and telemarketers. Women hold a whopping 71 per cent of the jobs that are exposed to AI, it found. Also read: Talk to the bot: Will your next job interview be with AI? How low-wage workers will be hit? Those who will have to look for new jobs also include Black and Hispanic workers, employees who do not hold college degrees, and the youngest and oldest workers, the McKinsey report says. The shrinking demand for food and production work will hit the Black and Hispanic communities the most. At least 12 million workers in the US will have to change occupations by the end of this decade, which is seven years away. This is more than 25 per cent of what was predicted by the Mckinsey Global Institute in a report published in February 2021.

Employees at the low end of the pay scale will face the brunt and to take up jobs in new industries they will need to acquire new skills. According to the report, low-wage workers across categories will suffer job losses. Those most vulnerable positions include retail salespersons, cashiers and other low-income workers and a large number of them are women. It finds that workers earning less than $38,200 (Rs 31.2 lakh) could account for almost 80 per cent of all possible career transitions in that period, says an article in The Washington Post. [caption id=“attachment_12925782” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Workers in oil and gas production will suffer as the US looks to end greenhouse emissions. Representational picture/AFP[/caption] How net-zero goals will affect jobs The promise to meet net-zero emissions will disrupt the job market, affecting jobs on a wide scale. With the US working towards ending greenhouse emissions, around 3.5 million jobs will be lost. Those working in oil and gas production and automotive manufacturing will be affected, the McKinsey study says. But this will be offset as about 4.2 million new jobs will be created in new sectors like renewable energy. This is an addition of 7 lakh new jobs. “The energy transition, coupled with stepped-up government spending on infrastructure, will increase demand for construction workers who are already in short supply. McKinsey sees construction employment growing 12% from 2022 through 2030,” reports Bloomberg. This means not all is gloom. [caption id=“attachment_12925792” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Industries like healthcare cannot be automated easily, says the report. Pixabay[/caption] Which industries stand to gain? The report also says that advances in AI will create new opportunities and benefit some existing professions. With less time spent on doing technical tasks, white-collar workers can pay attention to creative and strategic work that AI cannot do as of now. Lawyers and civil engineers stand to gain. Also, not all work can be automated, especially those in more manual fields like healthcare and agriculture. “We see generative AI enhancing the way STEM, creative, and business and legal professionals work rather than eliminating a significant number of jobs outright,” the authors say, according to The Washington Post. Also read: Indian startup Dukaan fires over 90% of its support staff, replaces them with AI bots However, these fields are dominated by men. Women make up only 17.1 per cent of engineers and 38.5 per cent of lawyers in the US, according to the country’s Bureau of Labour Statistics. The Goldman Sachs report also predicted that the increase in the use of AI in the workplace could boost the annual GDP of the US by seven per cent. This will fuel economic activity which will push the rise in demand and expand jobs. But while new jobs are on the horizon, they might not be desirable. Workers in low-paying jobs could be “pushed into data-labelling”, Kerry McInerney, a research fellow at the Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence at Cambridge University, told The Washington Post. This involves adding labels to videos, images, or audio that teach machine learning models to recognise what is in them. Such work can be “psychologically harmful” because of the material to be identified, says McInerney, according to the publication. We are already living in a world with AI and layoffs have become regular. As many as 4,000 jobs were lost in just May from AI adoption, according to recruitment firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. We can’t beat it, so we might as well learn to live with it. McNeilly summed it up perfectly: “Whether the changes are good or ill for individual workers will depend on their occupation, firm, individual capabilities and ability to adapt. Some will adjust better than others. There will be winners and losers.” With inputs from agencies