Man versus robot is a trope that’s been around for decades, but it might soon be woman versus robot. Recent data released by McKinsey established that women are 1.5 times more likely to be displaced by automation, as women in the U.S. make up the largest percentage of workers in low-wage jobs, or those earning less than $30,800 a year.
Other big job losses are likely to occur in customer service, office administrative roles and food services, which McKinsey estimates will equate to 11.8 million workers overall by 2030—all jobs where female workers are heavily represented.
Black and Hispanic workers also make up a vast proportion of workers in the above categories and will be affected by AI in the workplace.
Change in mindset
However, McKinsey’s data suggests that the increasing importance of soft skills in the workplace, often learned on the job, will result in employers looking beyond educational credentials when considering prospective candidates.
These skills include skills the bots have yet to master (for now):
- Critical thinking.
- Creativity.
- Leadership and social influence.
- Flexibility.
- Stress tolerance.
In fact, 60% of U.S. workers have gained skills through experience, not college degrees. And when employers facilitate remote working opportunities for those who cannot travel to an office or need additional flexibility due to family obligations or childcare issues, they can immediately access additional talent that they might have previously overlooked or discouraged from applying.
Whether you want to pivot to a role that is at the forefront of generative AI or are looking for ways to futureproof your career and ensure your skills are not only valued but nurtured, the TechRepublic Job Board is the perfect place to start your job search. It features thousands of opportunities in companies that are committed to fostering an equal-opportunities workplace and are actively hiring, like these three:
Machine Learning Engineer 5, Adobe, San Jose
Adobe says it is committed to creating exceptional employee experiences where everyone is respected and has access to equal opportunity. Its GenTech team is seeking a Machine Learning Engineer to help make generative AI offerings a world-class, leading-edge, differentiating product in the Adobe Cloud ecosystem. As such, you will design and engineer cloud infrastructure with effective computing and storage resources and an efficient networking topology that meets enterprise security compliance and build and develop an effective and maintainable toolkit for infrastructure provision and management on public cloud like AWS. View additional details here.
Front End Web Developer, Booz Allen Hamilton, Reston
Booz Allen Hamilton states that it is an equal employment opportunity employer that empowers people to fearlessly drive change. It is currently hiring a Front End Web Developer to research, conceive and develop innovative software applications for use across the Department of Defense and intelligence community. In this role, you will ensure the successful delivery of new services and capabilities while enabling a rapid pace of innovation and prototyping. You will also leverage the latest technologies and frameworks in a DevOps pipeline and create intuitive visualizations of large-scale data and geospatial analytics. See the full job description here.
Senior Software Engineer (Droplet), DigitalOcean, Remote
As a remote-first organization, DigitalOcean employees are based around the world. However, every staffer benefits from formalized mentorship and other internal programs as part of the company’s high-growth mindset, which involves investing in employee development at every step of your career. As a Senior Software Engineer, you will build and maintain customer-facing and internal APIs that provide a full lifecycle of features to customers for Droplets and their associated images. You will also design, build, test and scale distributed systems, contribute to and take part in open source software communities and solve large scale problems in a technically rewarding environment. Get more information about this role here.