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Robots 'could take the jobs of 15 million workers': find out if yours is at risk

About half the full time jobs in the UK could be done by robots in a matter of decades

Hazel Sheffield
Friday 13 November 2015 17:53 GMT
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If you work in sales or customers services then there's a 70 per cent chance robots will take your job
If you work in sales or customers services then there's a 70 per cent chance robots will take your job (ChinaFotoPress/ChinaFotoPress via Getty Images)

The Bank of England has done some sums and worked out that 15 million UK jobs will be done by robots in a few decades' time.

Which is great if you're a robot, but not so great if you need that job to buy food and shelter for survival on this planet.

Andy Haldane, the chief economist at the Bank of England, came up with the number by estimating the probability of a frange of jobs being automated in the coming decades. He then multiplied these probabilities by the number employed in each sector and added them all together to make 15 million.

That's about half of all the people in full time work today.

Are you at risk? If you work in sales or customers services then there's a 70 per cent chance robots will take your job. Managers, lawyers and doctors are least at risk, research shows.

We put together a quiz to help you figure out if you should retrain immediately. The questions below are based on research by Michael Osborne and Carl Frey from Oxford University called 'The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to automation?'

The Oxford professors base their calculations on nine key skills: social perceptiveness, negotiation, persuasion, assisting and caring for others, originality, fine arts, finger dexterity, manual dexterity and the need to work in a cramped work space.

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