How Technology Will Change The Demand For Teachers

How Technology Will Change the Demand for Teachers

Michael Hansen | January 26, 2016

[...] To set the stage, keep in mind that education is a labor-intensive industry. The most recent financial numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics indicate 55 cents out of every dollar spent on K-12 public schools in the U.S. goes towards salaries and benefits. Factoring in the so-called purchased services category, which also tend to be labor-intensive services like providing teacher professional development or driving and maintaining school buses, that figure exceeds 60 cents on the dollar. And labor-intensive industries generally imply large potential for gains from a technology-labor substitution. So are schools the next fertile ground for robots to flourish and humans to flounder?
First the good news, as far as job security is concerned: Most core education jobs are fairly well insulated from replacement by technology. According to a recent McKinsey report about the automation potential of approximately 2,000 work activities in the U.S., occupations in the education sector tend to have many job tasks that are not amenable to automation. [...]

Most education jobs are on the left-hand side of the scatterplot, representing low levels of automation potential – almost all occupations are less than 20 percent automatable. The two education occupations with more significant automation potential are both library jobs, which currently employ relatively few workers. Source: http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brown-center-chalkboard/posts/2016/01/26-technology-demand-teachers-hansen

Source: https://public.tableau.com/profile/mckinsey.analytics#!/vizhome/AutomationandUSjobs/Technicalpotentialforautomation

<more at http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/brown-center-chalkboard/posts/2016/01/26-technology-demand-teachers-hansen; related links: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519241/report-suggests-nearly-half-of-us-jobs-are-vulnerable-to-computerization/ (Report Suggests Nearly Half of U.S. Jobs Are Vulnerable to Computerization. Oxford researchers say that 45 percent of America’s occupations will be automated within the next 20 years. September 12, 2013) and https://public.tableau.com/profile/mckinsey.analytics#!/vizhome/AutomationandUSjobs/Technicalpotentialforautomation (Automation Potential And Wages For US Jobs. 2014)>