From customs officers to good old travel agents, traditional jobs are sidelined by technological advancements – a trend that’s here to stay

Since the early 20th century, technological advancements have been affecting traditional jobs, forcing them to adapt or making them obsolete. This phenomenon has intensified over the past few years, forcing positions previously taken for granted out of the market.

Disappearing jobs:

Customs officers have turned from key figures in the import process into mere administration clerks.

Travel agents – remember those? We all prefer to go online to reserve our flights, hotels, and rental cars.

Bank tellers are soon to be extinct.

Upcoming developments are threatening to do away with supermarket cashiers, too. Self-checkout queues are already quite common in retail chains around the world.

Service roles in all sectors have already made the shift from face-to-face communication to phone service. The next stage is scaling back on call centers in favor of online self-service. Even public institutions such as the Income Tax Authority, the National Insurance Institute, and local authorities allow citizens to manage and carry out payments online, saving precious time and effort.

In the coming decades we can expect to see even more face-to-face and phone service jobs become a thing of the past. There’s no doubt that technology is doing away with traditional jobs.