The Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Work has shaped how governments measure the risks of automation, informed business strategy through a long-running partnership with Citi, and helped young people prepare for changing skill demands. Its research has been applied by the White House, the Bank of England and the World Bank, and reached millions of people through the BBC.

The Challenge

Technological progress can raise living standards and create new opportunities, but its benefits are unevenly shared. Workers face changing demands for skills, while some communities struggle to replace declining industries. Governments and businesses need evidence about what technology can do, who is exposed to disruption and how people can adapt.

Supported by Citi, the programme brings together economics and expertise in artificial intelligence to investigate these questions, examining how technological change affects employment, inequality and the prospects of different places.

The Impact

The programme was established in January 2015 as the Oxford Martin Programme on Technology and Employment, building on a 2013 study by Carl Benedikt Frey and Maike Osborne, The Future of Employment. That research assessed 702 occupations and estimated that 47% of US employment was in occupations at high risk of computerisation. The estimate concerned technological capabilities; it did not predict how many jobs would disappear or when. By October 2026 the article had been cited more than 22,500 times according to Google Scholar.

Since 2015, the programme and the research on which it builds have:

• Provided a methodology applied by the White House, whose analysis found that 83% of US jobs paying under $20 an hour faced pressure from automation, against 4% of jobs paying over $40.
• Underpinned Bank of England analysis suggesting up to 15 million UK jobs could be at risk, and a World Bank finding that two-thirds of jobs in developing countries are technically susceptible.
• Reached two million views in the first week of the BBC’s Will a robot take your job? interactive.
• Produced seven editions of Technology at Work with Citi between 2015 and 2023, connecting the research with investors and business leaders.
• Informed an educational programme for young people in Poland and classroom resources for teachers, through The Future of Skills.
• Shown, in a Nature study of 20 million research articles and four million patent applications, that remote teams are less likely to produce breakthrough discoveries.

Informing policy and public understanding

The research gave institutions a way to examine how machine capabilities intersect with the tasks people perform at work. The Council of Economic Advisers combined the automation estimates with wage data, and the resulting analysis featured in the White House’s 2016 report on artificial intelligence, automation and the economy, which set out responses spanning education, training and support for workers in transition.

In the UK, the Taylor Review of modern working practices drew on the study and fed into the government’s 2018 Good Work Plan. The programme’s directors have given oral evidence to parliamentary committees on several occasions, from the Commons Science and Technology Committee’s 2016 inquiry into robotics and artificial intelligence to the Lords inquiry into home-based working in 2025 and the Commons Business and Trade Committee’s 2026 inquiry into AI, business and the future of the workforce; the work also informed the Bean Review of economic statistics and the Government Chief Scientific Adviser’s report on AI. The Bank of England and the World Bank extended the approach to British and developing-economy labour markets, and the OECD, the IMF, the World Trade Organization, McKinsey and Germany’s Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs built on it further. In Europe, the team worked with the European Commission on narrowing the digital skills gap and joined the Horizon 2020 Technequality consortium on technology and inequality.

Beyond government, the BBC interactive made the evidence accessible to anyone curious about their own occupation, and the 2013 paper drew sustained international coverage, including a 2018 cover feature in The Economist.

Preparing people and businesses for change

The collaboration with Pearson and Nesta broadened the focus to the skills people would need as employment changed. The findings of The Future of Skills: Employment in 2030 formed the core of the educational programme at Smart Club, a school for children and teenagers founded in Kalisz, Poland, in 2018, whose founder described the report as a guide to its development. Nesta and Speakers for Schools translated the research into a briefing with classroom strategies and careers guidance for teachers and families. As co-director Maike Osborne put it: “It is truly gratifying to see our research being put into practice”.

The Citi partnership created a durable link between the research and business debate. The second edition of Technology at Work, produced with the World Bank, put average automation risk across the OECD at 57%, rising to 69% in India and 77% in China; the 2019 edition brought together contributions from 12 chief executives alongside policymakers, educators and economists.

A continuing research legacy

The programme continues to examine how new technologies change work, including generative AI. The Nature study, covering six decades of global science and invention, found that geographically dispersed teams are less likely to produce disruptive breakthroughs, a result with direct implications for remote work and innovation policy. Recent work has examined machine translation and the demand for language skills, automation and reshoring in Europe and, with Citi, the economics of ageing populations.

The research also reached general readers through Frey’s The Technology Trap (2019), a Financial Times Best Book of the Year, and How Progress Ends (2025), winner of the 2026 PROSE Award in Economics and shortlisted for the 2025 FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year and the 2026 Lionel Gelber Prize.

Its legacy includes methods embedded in government analysis, evidence applied in classrooms, and a decade of dialogue with business about preparing for technological change.