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Almost 30% of workers in Portugal are employed in professions at serious risk of collapse, according to a new study by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation.
The jobs at risk include positions in sales, waitressing, and machine operators in textile manufacturing. All are “seriously threatened” by automation and technological advancements like artificial intelligence (AI), according to the study.
The study also highlights the increasing challenges in the job market as digitalization transforms industries. Workers in these vulnerable sectors are exposed to the destructive effects of technology: tasks previously performed by humans being replaced by machines. At the same time, AI could complement certain human tasks, making some jobs more productive.
Four categories divide employment
The research divides employment into four categories. Firstly, professions on the rise, that are the jobs with high exposure to AI’s transformative effects and low exposure to destructive effects. Then, there are the professions in decline, jobs with high exposure to destructive effects and low exposure to transformative effects.
The third category is the human domain, with jobs with low exposure to both transformative and destructive effects. The last category, the machine domain, comes with high exposure to both transformative and destructive effects.
People at risk have low wages and fewer qualifications
Nearly 30% of Portugal’s workforce is employed in “collapsing professions” that are vulnerable to automation. These include sales workers (5.3% of total employment), “other elementary professions” (3.5%), and waiters and bar staff (2.5%). Machine operators in textile, fur, and leather production, as well as skilled food processing workers and cashiers, also fall into this category.
The study points out that workers in these at-risk professions generally earn lower wages and have fewer qualifications, leaving them more vulnerable to unemployment or unstable employment. Only 5.4 per cent of workers in these sectors have completed higher education.
How to tackle the problem
To minimize the negative impacts of these changes, the study suggests policymakers focus on retraining and reintegrating workers into the labor market. The authors suggest that transitioning to jobs in the “human domain” may not be particularly difficult, as the skills required are similar to those of the collapsing professions.
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