How Much Work Is Currently Capable of Being Automated?
Probably a much higher percentage than you would guess. McKinsey & Company state where machines could and couldn't replace humans (yet),
Last year, we showed that currently demonstrated technologies could automate 45 percent of the activities people are paid to perform and that about 60 percent of all occupations could see 30 percent or more of their constituent activities automated, again with technologies available today.
As you might guess, this couched with a large caveat,
In discussing automation, we refer to the potential that a given activity could be automated by adopting currently demonstrated technologies, that is to say, whether or not the automation of that activity is technically feasible.2Each whole occupation is made up of multiple types of activities, each with varying degrees of technical feasibility. Exhibit 1 lists seven top-level groupings of activities we have identified. Occupations in retailing, for example, involve activities such as collecting or processing data, interacting with customers, and setting up merchandise displays (which we classify as physical movement in a predictable environment). Since all of these constituent activities have a different automation potential, we arrive at an overall estimate for the sector by examining the time workers spend on each of them during the workweek.
So the real question becomes which occupations rely most heavily on the skills that are most technically feasible to replace with automation,
Almost one-fifth of the time spent in US workplaces involves performing physical activities or operating machinery in a predictable environment: workers carry out specific actions in well-known settings where changes are relatively easy to anticipate. Through the adaptation and adoption of currently available technologies, we estimate the technical feasibility of automating such activities at 78 percent, the highest of our seven top-level categories (Exhibit 2). Since predictable physical activities figure prominently in sectors such as manufacturing, food service and accommodations, and retailing, these are the most susceptible to automation based on technical considerations alone.
And the least?
Of all the sectors we have examined, the technical feasibility of automation is lowest in education, at least for now. To be sure, digital technology is transforming the field, as can be seen from the myriad classes and learning vehicles available online. Yet the essence of teaching is deep expertise and complex interactions with other people. Together, those two categories—the least automatable of the seven identified in the first exhibit—account for about one-half of the activities in the education sector.