According to recent reports, workers, particularly in the Midlands and North of England, are most at risk of losing their jobs to robots.

According to The Centre for Cities estimates, nine areas across the UK could lose over a quarter of jobs to automation and artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030.

So, who’s the most at risk?

The government, however, has said that it’s committed to helping workers secure “the jobs of tomorrow” with a nationwide retraining scheme – “Our future will be somewhat different to the picture portrayed in this report.” Theresa May stated.

The report states places with a “lower share of high-skilled jobs”, such as Mansfield and Sunderland are at risk of losing nearly 30% of their current roles. Almost one in five jobs at risk are in retail and one in eight are in customer services in Sunderland.

Areas with higher-skilled jobs, however, such as Oxford may also lose up to 15% of their current roles.

Chief executive of Centre for Cities, Andrew Carter said robots could “compound” the north-south divide.

In recent years the increasing incorporation of automation can be seen everywhere – through the rise of self-service checkouts in most supermarkets as well as messenger bots created to deal with customer service issues.

“Automation and globalisation will bring huge opportunities, but there is also a real risk that many people and places will lose out,” Carter continued.

“We need to reform the education system to give young people the skills to thrive in the future, and we also need greater investment in lifelong learning to help adults adapt to the changing labour market.”