Katharina Dengler DIREKT 26/ 2016 THE IMPACTS OF DIGITALISATION ON THE WORKING ENVIRONMENT AT A GLANCE Digitalisation will change the future working environment, with different impacts for different occupations. Substitution potentials determine which occupations could already be substituted by computers or computer-controlled machines. The findings show that fears of massive loss of jobs are unfounded. Ongoing digitalisation will change the working environment, with different impacts for different occupations. The discussion is often dominated by fears that on-going digitalisation will leave many unemployed. One very popular U.S. study by Frey and Osborne predicts that almost half of all jobs in the United States could be automated over the next two decades(Frey/ Osborne 2013). The study is frequently used as the basis for calculating automation probabilities for Germany by recoding the U.S. occupational codes to German occupational codes (Brzeski/Burk 2015; Bonin et al. 2015). These studies often find similarly high values for Germany. WORKING ENVIRONMENT 4.0 Dengler and Matthes challenge the transferability of Frey and Osborne’s study to Germany and calculate substitution potentials for Germany(Dengler/Matthes 2015a). The substitution potential indicates the extent to which an occupation could already be substituted by computers or computer-controlled machines today(in the year 2013). The substitution potential is determined for each occupation by calculating the proportion of routine tasks that can already be substituted by computers or computer-controlled machines following programmable rules (Dengler et al. 2014). Tasks such as sorting and calculating can already be done by computers, while managing and advising can only be computer-supported. Substitution potentials concentrate only on the technical feasibility. Legal and ethical obstacles are excluded, as are cost considerations. We use occupational data from the BERUFENET expert database of the German Federal Employment Agency; thus, the specific characteristics of the German labour market and education system can be directly considered(BERUFENET 2013). SUBSTITUTION POTENTIALS BY REQUIREMENT LEVEL The findings are presented for different levels of occupational aggregation. First of all, the substitution potential is differen­tiated by requirement level(Figure 1). One would expect the substitution potential to fall as the requirement level rises. In fact, as the findings reveal, both unskilled/semi-skilled occupations, typically requiring no vocational training, and specialist occu­pations, which usually require at least two years of training, demonstrate similar substitution potentials at approximately 45 per cent, i.e., approximately 45 per cent of the tasks in these occupations could already be done by computers today. Only complex specialist and highly complex occupations offer a little more protection from automation. SUBSTITUTION POTENTIALS BY OCCUPATIONAL SEGMENTS Substitution potentials also vary considerably between occupa­tional segments(figure 2). The substitution potential is highest in the manufacturing occupations, where the mean exceeds 70 per cent. According to Frey and Osborne this represents a very high risk of automatisation by digitalisation. With almost 65 per cent >