Jack Caporal is the Research Director for The Motley Fool and Motley Fool Money. Jack leads efforts to identify and analyze trends shaping investing and personal financial decisions across the United States. His research has appeared in thousands of media outlets including Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, Bloomberg, and CNBC, and has been cited in congressional testimony. He previously covered business and economic trends as a reporter and policy analyst in Washington, D.C. He serves as Chair of the Trade Policy Committee at the World Trade Center in Denver, Colorado. He holds a B.A. degree in International Relations with a concentration in International Economics from Michigan State University.
By 2030, there will be 539,200 fewer office and administrative support jobs than there were in 2020, a decline about the size of Atlanta's population.
There will be 336,000 fewer cashier positions in the United States in 2030 than there were in 2020. Over 250,000 secretary and administrative assistant jobs are expected to become obsolete. About 85,000 fewer fabricators and assemblers in the manufacturing industry will be employed in 2030 compared to 2020.
That's according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' most recent employment projections. The government agency reasons that automation or other efficiency gains through technology will contribute to employment declines in 19 out of the 30 occupations it estimates will have the largest decline in employment over the next decade.
Read on to find out which occupations are most at risk of job loss due to automation and other structural changes in the economy.
Key findings
Automation and other technologies are projected to play a role in reducing the number of jobs in 19 of the 30 occupations BLS estimates will see the largest decline in employment by 2030.
The top three occupations with the largest projected declines in employment by 2030 are as follows:
Cashiers, with 336,400 fewer jobs.
Secretaries and administrative assistants (except those in legal, medical, and executive fields), with 156,900 fewer jobs.
Executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants, with 100,600 fewer jobs.
The occupations that will experience the fastest declines in employment by 2030 are as follows:
Word processors and typists, with a 16.3% decline in jobs.
Parking enforcement workers, with a 2.8% decline.
Nuclear power reactor operators, with a 1.8% decline.
Three major occupational groups are projected to see declines in employment by 2030:
Office and administrative support occupations, with 539,200 fewer jobs.
Sales and related occupations, with 202,900 fewer jobs.
Production occupations, with 39,000 fewer jobs.
Eight of the 30 occupations BLS projects to experience the largest decline in employment by 2030 pay below-average wages.
26 of the 30 occupations BLS estimated to have the largest decline in employment by 2030 are in office and administrative support, sales, and production.
Workers in occupations most at risk of automation are more likely to make less money and have less education than workers in occupations at less risk of automation, according to the Government Accountability Office.
These are the jobs that will experience the largest decline in employment over the next decade
Three major occupational groups are projected to see declines in employment, per the BLS: sales and related occupations, office and administrative support occupations, and production occupations, which includes manufacturing jobs.
Office and administrative support occupations are estimated to see the largest decline in employment with over half a million jobs becoming obsolete by 2030.
According to the BLS, these are the 10 occupations that will undergo the largest decline in employment -- caused at least in part by automation or technology -- by 2030. Occupations in bold make less than the national median on average.
Cashiers (-336,400 positions)
Secretaries and administrative assistants, except legal, medical, and executive (-156,900 positions)
Executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants (-100,600 positions)
Miscellaneous assemblers and fabricators (-84,600 positions)
Tellers (-73,100 positions)
Inspectors, testers, sorters, samplers, and weighers (-68,100 positions)
Office clerks, general (-60,400 positions)
Bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing clerks (-48,100 positions)
Shipping, receiving, and inventory clerks (-40,600 positions)
Data entry keyers (-35,600 positions)
See the tables below for more details, including more occupations, occupational categories, median wages, and other data.
These are the occupations that will see the fastest declines over the next decade -- again, where automation and technology are one of the causes. Occupations in bold make less than the national median wage.
Parking enforcement workers (-35% employment)
Nuclear power reactor operators (-32.9% employment)
Telephone operators (-25.4% employment)
Switchboard operators, including answering service (-22.7% employment)
Data entry keyers (-22.5% employment)
Legal secretaries and administrative assistants (-21% employment)
Executive secretaries and executive administrative assistants (-18.7% employment)
Order clerks (-18.2% employment)
Timing device assemblers and adjusters (-17.8% employment)
Print binding and finishing workers (-17.5% employment)
Automation and technology will contribute to lower employment in 19 of the 30 jobs projected to have the largest decline in employment
Automation and technology that makes workers more productive are the primary reasons cited by the BLS for job losses in 19 of the 30 occupations projected to have the largest decline in employment by 2030 and 16 of the 30 occupations projected to have the fastest decline in employment by 2030.
Given that occupations that feature repetitive and predictable tasks are most easily automated, it's logical that occupations in office and administrative support, like secretaries and clerks, data entry keyers, and telephone operators are estimated to see the largest net decline in employment and some of the fastest declines in employment over the next decade.
Cashiers are projected to have the largest decline in employment by 2030 of any category. BLS estimates that some 336,000 cashier jobs will no longer be necessary by 2030 due to a combination of technology and automation in the form of self-checkout and online commerce.
A number of production occupations are also expected to see large and fast declines due to improvements in robotics, 3D printing, the Internet of Things, and other related technologies.
Workers in jobs most at risk of automation are more likely to make less money and have less education than workers in jobs not at risk of automation
While automation presents risks to workers across the economy, those that make less money and have less education tend to hold occupations that are more vulnerable to automation, according to the Government Accountability Office.
About 60% of workers in jobs susceptible to automation hold a high school diploma or less education, according to the GAO. Meanwhile, almost 90% of workers that hold a graduate degree and nearly 75% of workers that have a bachelor's degree are in occupations not exposed to automation.
The median hourly wage for workers in occupations susceptible to automation is $14.26 while those in roles not susceptible to automation make $22.06 per hour, the GAO found. 19 of the 30 occupations that BLS projects to see the largest employment declines by 2030 provided wages below the national average in 2020.
Unfortunately, low-wage workers with relatively little formal education are the least likely to be able to afford retraining or upskilling they may need to change careers. Employers may be less willing to upskill lower-wage, lower-skill workers because doing so would require more resources than upskilling a higher-wage, higher-skill worker.
It's not just low-wage workers: 42,000 supervisor roles are expected to be obsolete by 2030
Low-wage jobs are not the only ones at risk of automation. The Brookings Institution examined the overlap between patents for AI technologies and job descriptions and found that certain roles most commonly occupied by men with bachelor's degrees are most exposed to automation, along with production jobs. The latter category includes managers, supervisors, and analysts, according to Brookings.
The BLS' projections allude to these roles being at risk to automation. BLS projects almost 23,000 fewer office worker supervisors and almost 19,000 fewer supervisors of non-retail sales workers by 2030, for example. As automation and other technology require fewer workers in the roles those supervisors would manage, a decline in supervisors would logically follow.
The Brookings Institution also found that women are less exposed to automation because they have tended toward occupations that involve more interpersonal skills, such as education and healthcare.
A separate Brookings report found that women have historically adapted better to automation than men despite previously being more exposed to automation. Women are also trending toward surpassing men in educational attainment and as a result may be better positioned to cope with and take advantage of automation.
Robots and AI aren't all doom and gloom
Job automation is a double-edged sword. On one side, automation of labor can render certain jobs obsolete and threaten the livelihoods of economically vulnerable individuals. Automation is also a path to productivity gains, lower prices, and new industries.
It's unlikely that automation will erase entire occupations. Workers in any occupation carry out a range of tasks, not all of which can be automated. And there's certainly a debate about which jobs are most threatened by automation and how quickly technology that allows automation will be developed and adopted.
Still, certain tasks can be more easily automated, such as those that are repetitive and don't rely too much on human-to-human interaction. Those tasks make up a larger amount of work in certain occupations. As a result, some occupations are more at risk of job loss to automation than others.
Notably, over half of those 30 occupations provide below-average wages. In other words, hundreds of thousands of economically vulnerable workers are projected to lose their jobs to automation, and at the same time they are less likely to have the financial means to independently retrain or upskill in an effort to switch careers. This is a vexing problem, the solutions to which are hotly debated.
But it's not all doom and gloom. Despite the rapid pace of technological change and the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that total U.S. employment will grow from 153.5 million to 165.4 million jobs from 2020 to 2030.
And if those in lower-wage occupations that are most exposed to automation are given support to learn new skills and retrain, automation -- and a smart response to it -- can be a force that elevates the livelihoods and competitiveness of otherwise at-risk workers.
