Ever since clog-wearing Luddites threw their shoes into automatic looms in the 15th century, people have feared having their jobs replaced by machines.

A new report has tried to work out which jobs may be at risk as technology takes on more of the capability previously reserved for professionals.

The future does not look great for people employed in number-crunching or data entry.

A paper titled 'The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?', by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, assessed the skills for a given task in comparison with the enhanced abilities of computers, to determine which jobs are at risk.

The paper says that while previously only repetitive manual tasks were in the robots’ firing line, now more advanced jobs like legal transcription, truck driving or administration could become the life’s work of an android.

The researchers conceded that there are dozens of human elements which cannot at this point be automated, but would be a consideration for engineers trying to create robot replacements. Instead the paper is focused on the technical requirements of hundreds of jobs, ranking them against the technological capability of autonomous hardware and software.

The study says some of the jobs soon to be filled by office automatons include:

  • Data entry
  • Library technicians
  • New accounts clerks
  • Photographic process workers and processing machine operators
  • Tax preparation
  • Cargo and freight agents
  • Watch repair
  • Insurance underwriting
  • Mathematical technicians
  • Sewer hands
  • Title examiners, abstractors and searchers
  • Telemarketer