Robotic arms weld car frames in a Japanese auto factory in December. Employment in transportation equipment manufacturing was nearly unchanged between 1970 and 2007, but the sector became far more productive. Over the previous five decades, automation hasn’t reduced the number of jobs available in 18 advanced economies, including the U.S.–in fact, it helped increase total employment, finds a new paper by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s David Autor and Utrecht University’s Anna Salomons and released Thursday by the Brookings Institution.
But the economists’ paper also found that automation, and the productivity enhancements that it drives, has resulted in laborers […]
Full Post at blogs.wsj.com