FutureWork disruption index for North Carolina

North Carolina confronts an enormous future jobs challenge as two big trends converge: (1) a technological revolution will eliminate or seriously reshape more than a million current jobs, and (2) our demography is shifting rapidly as we age, grow more diverse, and our workforce welcomes more women. According to a recent analysis at North Carolina State University, jobs in some 39 major current employment categories in the state are at least 70% likely to be eliminated within one generation as a result of automation. More than one million North Carolinians currently work in these jobs. (Note: Other analysis implies that an additional one million current North Carolina jobs may be lost during the same time frame to tech enabled offshoring; because detailed analysis is not yet available, however, we have not included this further disruptive factor in our modeling.) North Carolina’s demographic transition presents additional disruptive effects: the state must replace a large cohort of boomer retirees while ensuring the successful integration of a generation of new workers that includes more women and will become majority minority. To draw attention to these important challenges, the Institute for Emerging Issues’ new Future Work Disruption Index for North Carolina offers a comparative metric that helps define relative exposure to the disruptive impacts of technological and demographic changes for North Carolina’s counties and regional Prosperity Zones.