BERLIN, Feb. 15 (Xinhua) -- The increasing digitalization of the German economy will lead to a significant deterioration in the job prospects of auxiliary staff without professional qualifications, a study published on Thursday by the Nuremberg Institute for Employment Research (IAB) warns.

The study authors highlighted that 58 percent of the tasks completed by auxiliary staff could theoretically already be transferred to robots or computers. As technological improvements lead to more powerful artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, the share of auxiliary work in which humans could be substituted with machines has risen correspondingly and already increased by 12 percent in the past three years.

By contrast, workers with high levels of education and vocational training faced a lower risk of being partially or entirely replaced by digitalization.

The share of tasks which could currently be transferred to robots or computers was only at 24 percent in professions which required a four-year university degree having only risen by 6 percent since 2015. The IAB researchers noted that the share was nearly stagnant for information technology (IT) professionals and natural scientists during the same period.

Overall, every fourth person in professions with mandatory social security coverage was at risk of being partially (up to 70 percent) replaced by computer-driven machines. Around 46 percent of the working population are employed in professions in which theoretically between 30 and 70 percent of required tasks could be completed by computers.

According to the IAB study, however, it is far from clear that the theoretical potential for digitalization will ultimately translate into such dramatic outcomes.

"Cost constraints and legal barriers could mean that only a part of the technically-feasible automation potential is fully-realized," the authors wrote.

Nevertheless, the progress of digitalization certainly heralded significant change in the nature of work.

As a consequence, policymakers were tasked with ensuring the appropriate training of future workers. This would entail an emphasis on digital content, as well as acquiring social and interdisciplinary competences which are unique to humans.

Due to a growing amount work in "virtual teams", for example, the ability of staff to cooperate and manage their own output and time would also become more important. Enditem