A job performed remotely is now more vulnerable to automation than a position requiring physical presence: this is the finding of a Banque de France study establishing a direct link between remote work, the digitization of tasks, and declining recruitment.
The logic is simple: writing, data processing, administrative management, coding, and customer support are precisely the tasks that language models handle best. For a position to be replaceable by an algorithm, it must be able to operate without physical presence and direct human interaction.
The figures are clear. Among 21- to 29-year-olds, permanent-contract hiring has fallen by 28.3% since the end of 2022 in occupations most exposed to AI, compared with just 7.5% in occupations that cannot be automated—a 20-point gap that is virtually nonexistent among people over 50. Training and supervising a beginner remotely is time-consuming for managers: faced with tools capable of performing entry-level tasks, companies are choosing automation over training.
For recruiters, this means rethinking junior onboarding programs by placing greater emphasis on in-person work and direct mentoring. For remote-work candidates, the priority is to document tasks that require human judgment, customer relationships, or team coordination—areas that an algorithm cannot absorb.
This week: list the tasks in your role that could now be performed remotely without any human interaction, then identify for each one a way to connect it to a strategic decision, a customer relationship, or team coordination that makes it less automatable. Then share a concrete example on LinkedIn: “Here is a task I do not delegate to AI, and why.”