Back to the future : changing job profiles in the digital age

In light of increasingly "smarter" technologies, the future of (human) labour is questioned on a daily basis. A study by Frey and Osborne (2013), one of the most recognised contributions in this domain, estimated that half of the US labour force is highly susceptible to computerisation in the near future. Their findings have been applied for several follow-up investigations in other countries. However, the transferability of the results is limited by the set-up of the study. In contrast to previous investigations, our approach tries to overcome past shortcomings by collecting assessments on the susceptibility to digital technologies for the Austrian labour market by Austrian experts. We show that the diversity of previous findings regarding the degree of job automatisation is to a large extent driven by model selection and not by controlling for personal characteristics or tasks. Our results indicate that while clerical computer-based routine jobs are likely to change in the next decade, professional activities, e.g., the processing of complex information, are prone to digital change.