Oeiras Pole Communication, Events and Partnerships Office (NCEP)

Rui Baptista is a researcher at the Center for Technical Management Studies (CEGIST) and led the team that produced a study for the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation.

“The widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) is likely to bring about significant changes in the labor market” – this is one of the main conclusions of a study by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, which was coordinated by Rui Baptista, full professor at the Instituto Superior Técnico and researcher at the Centro de Estudos em Gestão do Técnico (CEGIST). The team also included Hugo Castro Silva and António Sérgio Ribeiro, also professors at Técnico and researchers at CEGIST, and Pablo Casa-Aljama, an economist at the European Commission’s Joint Research Center and previously a visiting assistant professor at Técnico and post-doctoral researcher at CEGIST.

Published on April 4, the document entitled “Automation and artificial intelligence in the Portuguese labor market: challenges and opportunities” divides the country’s professional occupations into four fields, according to their exposure to the transformative effects of AI and their exposure to the destructive effects of task automation.

The “rising professions”, with high exposure to the transformative effects of AI and low exposure to the destructive effects of automation, represent 22.5% of employment, and are the most promising for the future, with high added value and essential for leveraging economic growth. Examples of these professions, according to the study, are business managers, teachers, marketing specialists, doctors and other health professionals.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the “collapsing professions” are highly vulnerable to automation and have little potential to be transformed by AI. This group of occupations accounts for 28.8% of the national labor market and, on average, workers in this field earn lower incomes and have few qualifications, and may face a more precarious situation in the event of unemployment, according to the study. The study gives as examples home sales workers, waiters, cooks and unskilled farmers, among others.

12.9% of jobs are in “machine land”, where automation will dominate the execution of tasks, aided by the great transformative power of AI. The largest fraction corresponds to the “human terrain”, listed at 35.7%, which is characterized by low exposure to both automation and the transformative effects of AI.

In geographical terms, the analysis pointed out contrasts – Lisbon, Coimbra, Porto and Vila Real are the districts with the highest ratio of workers in “rising professions”, while some districts in the north of the country (Viana do Castelo, Braga, Aveiro, Viseu) have more than 40% of employment in “collapsing professions”, exposed to the destructive effects of digitalization.

The study’s authors argue that “policymakers should look for solutions that favor the adoption of technologies by companies, while creating mechanisms for the protection, retraining and professional mobility of the most vulnerable workers”.