More than a half of the Romanians believe that their job can be replaced by robots and automation, sooner or later. However, there are jobs that are deemed safe, since they cannot be automatized, such as being a priest, artist or shrink, as well as jobs that Romanians would like to be replaced by robots, the public servant being in the top of preferences, according to the latest survey conducted by BestJobs, one of the largest online recruitment platforms in Romania.
12% of the Romanians are afraid that robotization and automation could affect their job quite soon, within the next five years, while other 14.6% believe that this could happen within 5 to 10 years. 11.3% of them believe that their job could be automated only after 5 to 10 years, while 14% of them believe that it will take at least 20 years to replace their job by a robot. The remaining 48% are sure that robotization/automation will never be able to replace their job.
Increasing unemployment and social inequality are the main consequences on the labor market
Three out of five Romanians believe that robotization and the development of implementing artificial intelligence will lead to a much higher increase in salaries for the high-skilled jobs, compared to the low-skilled jobs. At the same time, around seven out of ten Romanian employees believe that the technological progress will lead to the increase of unemployment, particularly regarding the low-skilled jobs, as well as to the increase of the gap between high and low salaries, and implicitly to the increase of social inequality.
In general, two out of five Romanians believe that robots/AI will lead, in the next 20 years in Romania, to the decrease of the number of jobs requiring human resources, and only 6% of them believe the opposite, namely more jobs requiring human resources will be created. Instead, more than a half of them (53%) believe that the situation will be the same as today, some jobs will disappear, but they will be replaced by new ones.
However, there are jobs about which Romanians believe they can never be replaced by robots, the order of them being as follows: priest (43.3%), artist – painter, musician, designer, etc. (42.1%), shrink (36%), physician (34.4%), politician (30.3%), journalist (19.4%), teacher (18.6%), engineer (15.4%), police officer (15.38%), driver (6.5%), pharmacist (6.07%), cleaning staff (4.8%), accountant (3.6%), cashier (2.8%).
But there are also jobs that Romanians would like to be replaced by robots, namely public servant (51/4%), agricultural cropper (41.3%), cashier (36.4%), cleaning staff (34.4%), seller (21.8%), politician (20.6%), accountant (13.7%), bank counselor (13.7%), police officer (10.5%), surgeon (6.07%), lawyer (4.4%), and the last one, teacher (1.2%).
Robots and automation, an ally for replacing repetitive tasks
Almost 2 out of 5 Romanians stated that their job requires a repetitive/standardized work and creative/managerial work to the same extent, while other 15% said that their work is mainly repetitive/standardized, which can be automated or replaced by AI. Instead, in the opposite half, 46% stated they are carrying out creative/managerial work that cannot be automated or replaced by AI.
However, the standardized tasks that can be automated require part of each person’s daily activities at the office. Almost two out of five (38%) Romanians spend 2 hours a day by carrying out such repetitive operations, 16% spend 2 to 4 hours for them, while other almost 16% spend even more time for such operations.
