UK trial scheme will support workers made redundant by automation

The UK Government is trialling a new scheme that will retrain workers at risk of having their jobs replaced by automation.

It's estimated that up to 20 million jobs currently done by people in the UK will be fully automated by 2030, with recent advances in manufacturing, robotics, and AI allowing computers to take on many tasks previously thought to be too difficult to automate. Automation produces sizeable financial savings for companies but is also leading to record numbers of redundancies in certain fields.

While young people still in education may be able to re-target into other fields, those already in industry can find their skills and experience suddenly undervalued and themselves unemployable in a matter of years. The cost and time to re-train into another industry can be prohibitive, and employees can be left out in the cold.

The UK Government is now trialling a scheme to support those workers affected by automation by providing training. Those whose jobs are eliminated by automation will be helped to retrain into new careers, and those whose jobs are changed significantly by new equipment or processes will get the skills they need to keep doing their job.

The new National Retraining Scheme is currently being planned for an initial trial in Liverpool to assess the economic benefit of the intervention. The scheme is expected to change over time as the department learns where the pitfalls and benefits to people are, and the goal is ultimately to roll it out nationwide if it's successful.

Source: BBC News