"AI Will First Come For Women", 21 October 2023

...Women are more likely than men to lose their jobs. A 2019 study by Britain’s Office for National Statistics found that 70 percent of jobs at high risk from automation are held by women. This April, a University of North Carolina study found that almost 80 percent of women in the U.S. workforce will be affected by advances in generative artificial intelligence, compared with 58 percent of men...

While recent advances in generative AI have sharpened concerns about loss of jobs for white-collar workers, job losses due to companies ramping up automation have been taking place for years, as seen in Kenya. Kweilin Ellingrud, a director at the McKinsey Global Institute, said her research shows that automation is 14 times more likely to impact low-wage workers than high earners.

“I think the reason it’s grabbing headlines is because it is also affecting higher-wage jobs for the first time,” Ellingrud said. “I think now generative AI is focusing and impacting jobs across the spectrum—it affects your job, it affects my job. Some of us, myself included, aren’t used to thinking: ‘How will my work have to change? How will my job change?’”...

...Ellingrud said 85 percent of jobs impacted by generative AI will be concentrated in four job categories: food services, customer service and sales, office administration, and manufacturing. The first three are dominated by women...

...Her research at McKinsey has found that 12 million people will need to switch jobs by 2030 and that women are 1.5 times more likely than men to have to change their occupation. She said this means governments and businesses need to urgently take targeted actions to re-skill and up-skill women...