Deloitte: Robots to replace a quarter of business service workers by 2035
Highly repetitive tasks may not need human hands for much longer
- Accountancy firm warns that technology could replace those in administrative and IT roles
Updated : 15:55
Deloitte has predicted that as much as a quarter of jobs in the business services sector may be replaced by robots within the next 20 years.
The accountancy firm believes that rising wages and falling technology costs leaves many jobs at "high risk" of being taken over by automation.
Simon Barnes, a partner at Deloitte, warned that there could be a "fundamental change" in how the workforce is distributed in the next 10 to 20 years. People are likely to be made redundant from "repetitive and highly-structured" roles.
Mr Barnes said that Deloitte expects “the pace of automation to increase exponentially over the next few decades”.
Graduates and companies will have to adapt to the changing environment of employment within the sector, by learning new skills and increasing their knowledge.
“As automation becomes increasingly more cognitive and less robotic, the business services sector must move fast to make sure they recruit and retrain people with the right skills and knowledge to address this,” Barnes says.
Deloitte's prediction comes hot on the heels of that of Bank of England governor Mark Carney, who said that the speed of technological change makes it difficult for young people to choose a career.
Carney said that jobs we are currently familiar with "may be gone tomorrow".