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Report: Local Job Market Vulnerable to Automation

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BRADENTON – With an estimated 47 percent of jobs in the U.S. vulnerable to automation, a new report has Florida dominating the top 25 metro areas at risk. The North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton market ranked 25.

Depending on the knowledge, skills and abilities an occupation requires, as well as the variety of tasks it involves, certain jobs will be more susceptible to automation than others. According to the report by SmartAsset’s, some popular occupations most vulnerable to automation include tax preparers, real estate brokers, cashiers, secretaries and administrative assistants. All four of those occupations have over a 95 percent chance of computerization according to their findings.

To rank the places where jobs are most vulnerable to automation, two factors were considered: the risk of automation in each occupation (based on an existing Oxford study) and the number of people working in different occupations in each metro area. These metrics were then used to compute the percentage of jobs at risk for each of the 150 locations analyzed.

The report noted that there is a strong negative correlation between an occupation’s risk of computerization and the median income for that occupation. Of the top 10 places with the biggest percentage of jobs at risk to automation, all but one ranked in the bottom third of the metropolitan areas in terms of median annual income, as reported by the Census Bureau.

Florida was the only state that had multiple metro areas in the top 10 nationally, with no less than four markets making the list. Naples-Immokalee-Marco Island came in at third. Lakeland-Winter Haven was fifth, and Ocala ranked 9th.

The high volume of retail sales, waitpersons and cashiers contributed to all three markets' vulnerability and are indicative of similar risks elsewhere in the state, including the North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton market, where there is also a high population of realtors.


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