Who has more to fear from robot workers - men or women?

As automation continues to creep into the workplace, men are more at risk of losing their jobs to robots than women, according to a report from Moneyish.

The report says that jobs in the future will require the skills often taught at tertiary and higher education institutions. Since women have outnumbered men by increasingly large margins at university for decades, they are likely to be safer from automation for longer than their male peers.

Additionally, new technology could make physical labour jobs less strenuous, such as the upper body exoskeleton designed by Ekso Bionics, which can help a person to lift 15 extra pounds on each arm. This means competition for physical roles could increase. As they tend to be fields which employ large numbers of men, they could once again be the ones suffering the negative consequences of technology.

Moneyish’s report coincides with a warning from think tank Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), which says that businesses are more likely to invest in robots and computerised systems if faced with minimum wage hikes.