Over the summer, former City of Philadelphia Director of Special Initiatives Anne Gemmell sought out to bring stakeholders and leaders of Philly’s business and civic sectors together to tackle a rapidly growing issue: Advancing technology was changing jobs and folks will be pushed out of the workforce because of it.

It was an issue for the city before all the challenges of 2020: The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that automation was putting about 320,000 jobs at high risk over the next decade or so before the pandemic, Gemmell said, and technologists told her that urgency to adopt new solutions shorted that time to just a few years.

Jobs in retail work, cleaning and positions like toll booth workers (500 of whom were laid off this year) are vulnerable. These lower-wage jobs like retail cashiers and food service workers have been lost at a higher rate during the pandemic and are more vulnerable to automation. About 35,000 retail worker jobs may not be back, the Philly Fed found.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE