Hundreds of thousands of jobs will disappear because of artificial intelligence. Lawyers, clerks and salespeople are at risk

The advent of artificial intelligence will affect 600,000 Czech employees over the next ten years. Some of them, even if they stay in their current field, will have to retrain. Many others will have to leave it and start from scratch, or risk long-term unemployment.

According to the forecast of the Czech labour market, 1.2 million people will leave it over the next ten years, while another 1.9 million will join it.

"The biggest impact will come from the development of artificial intelligence, which will affect half of the jobs, 600,000 of them fundamentally," said Tomáš Wiedermann, a partner at Boston Consulting Group, which prepared the study in cooperation with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

According to the study, around 355,000 jobs will disappear, while 955,000 new ones will appear. Roughly two million people will then have to learn to work at least partially with artificial intelligence. Less than 290 000 people will have to retrain and move to new jobs. A further 67,000 will have to undergo broader training and change fields altogether. Without this, they will not find a job on the labour market and risk ending up in the labour office for a longer period of time.

Among the most affected positions will be analysts and software developers, database specialists, information services workers and some civil servants. "After all, it is already visible. Two years ago it was almost impossible to find analysts and software developers on the market. Now it is much easier," Wiedermann said.

But other professions are also at risk. For example, lawyers and related specialists, performers such as graphic designers or technicians, or hairdressers. However, for the latter, this is more to do with the number of graduates than with artificial intelligence. Jobs in sales or production support work are also in decline.

The advantage for nurses and teachers

On the other hand, there will be a significant shortage of teachers at almost all levels, from kindergartens to secondary schools, nurses, technicians and cooks. Overall, up to 43 000 teachers and related professionals will be missing.

"The surplus of legal specialists may be somewhat surprising, but the field will be significantly impacted by AI's ability to analyse legal documents. Retail workers, in turn, will be influenced by automation and the further development of e-commerce," Wiedermann added.

On the other hand, the high age of current teachers and the fact that many graduates from the faculties of education are pursuing other professions play a role in the teacher shortage.

According to the Ministry of Labour, the willingness of Czech employees to change jobs and fields is rather low. "The average length of time with one employer in our country with more than ten years is among the higher ones," said Jiří Šatava, a representative of the ministry.

One reason for this is that many households have almost no savings to allow them to "survive" the time between jobs. So if they've been moving somewhere, it's basically from one day to the next. It's not enough to upskill.

This can be solved both by digital retraining, which is currently offered to all people on the Jsemvkurzu.cz website by the Labour Office, and by increasing unemployment benefits. This is contained in the amendment to the Labour Code approved by senators.

Adapted from the website https://www.novinky.cz/clanek/ekonomika-kvuli-umele-inteligenci-zaniknou-statisice-mist-ohrozeni-jsou-pravnici-urednici-i-prodavaci-40516755