Automation threatens 80,000 jobs in Finger Lakes region, study says

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More than 80,000 jobs in the Finger Lakes region are highly vulnerable to automation, a new study published by the Center for an Urban Future contends, and roughly $9.7 billion in annual wages could be affected by automation in the Finger Lakes.

Of all regions in New York, the Finger Lakes region, which includes Rochester, is slightly better than average when it comes to the share of jobs that are highly automatable. The report find that 13.6 percent of all jobs in the Finger Lakes region are highly automatable, higher than New York City, where 10.2 percent of jobs are highly automatable; Hudson Valley, where 12.5 percent are vulnerable to automation; and the Capital region, where 13.2 percent are highly automatable.

Among the state’s 10 regions, the Finger Lakes has the fourth lowest automation potential, which measures the share of all job tasks that could be done using existing technology. The Finger Lakes has an automation potential of 42.9 percent, lower than Western and Central New York and the North Country, the report found.

“A new wave of automation is coming down the pike, and it has the potential to transform tens of thousands of jobs across the state,” said Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the Center for an Urban Future. “State and local officials need to get ahead of this and start preparing New Yorkers now for a more automated economy.”

However, the report’s authors caution that while 80,470 jobs are highly automatable here, that’s not to say all of those jobs will disappear anytime soon, or at all, “but a significant share of these jobs will be fundamentally transformed in the years ahead, with many requiring a higher degree of technology fluency, and some going away completely.”

The largest highly automatable occupations in the Finger Lakes are combined food preparation and serving workers, bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks and stock clerks and order fillers, according to the report.

Slightly fewer than 25,000 positions across the state of New York are 100 percent automatable. Those jobs include packaging and filling machine operators, ophthalmic laboratory technicians, logging equipment operators, slaughterers and meat packers and movie projectionists.

However, the report concludes, nearly 1.2 million jobs statewide could have 80 percent or more of their tasks performed by machines in the coming decades. Among those are bakers, bicycle mechanics, mail clerks and fast food workers.

Lower- and middle-income jobs likely will be most affected by the coming wave of automation, according to the report. Among the 100 most automatable occupations in the state with at least 1,000 workers, 68 percent make less than $40,000 per year, while 31 percent make between $40,000 and $80,000.

The report makes a number of recommendations for state and local policymakers. Among those suggestions are to expand upskilling programs that enable adults already in the workforce to develop new skills and credentials and to establish a statewide student success fund, which would empower SUNY and CUNY to implement and expand programs that help students earn a credential. The report’s authors also suggest making use of some of the state’s new $175 million investment in workforce development for programs that retrain workers for jobs of the future, and enacting federal legislation that would extend benefits from the Trade Adjustment Act to workers who lose jobs due to automation.

The Center for an Urban Future is a New York City-based think tank focused on expanding economic opportunity, reducing inequality and growing the economy in New York.

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