Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Automation and jobs: When technology boosts employment

Automation and jobs: When technology boosts employment

Do industries shed or create jobs when they adopt new labour-saving technologies? This column shows that manufacturing employment grew along with productivity for a century or more, and only later decreased. It argues that the changing nature of demand was behind this pattern, which led to market saturation. This implies that the main impact of automation in the near future may be a major reallocation of jobs, not necessarily massive job losses.

There is widespread concern today that many jobs will be lost to new computer technologies, as more human tasks can be performed by machines. A host of recent […]

Alienated Labor, B.S. Jobs, & the Dream of a 15-Hour Work Week

Alienated Labor, B.S. Jobs, & the Dream of a 15-Hour Work Week

Among anthropologists, there’s a classic story about a western missionary meeting an indigenous inhabitant of an island off the East coast of Australia. It was a bright, sunny day, and the missionary happened upon a man relaxing on the beach: MISSIONARY: Look at you! You’re just wasting your life way, lying around like that. MAN: Why? What do you think I should be doing? MISSIONARY: Well, there are plenty of coconuts all around here. Why not dry some of the coconut kernels, extract the oil, and sell it? MAN: And why would I want to do that? MISSIONARY: You […]

‘When rates really suck and drivers take it on the chin’

‘When rates really suck and drivers take it on the chin’

A conversation about the future of autonomous trucking with pro-labor author and sociologist Steve Viscelli.

Steve Viscelli doesn’t think of himself as a naysayer. “I’m more a yes-sayer with a pessimistic outlook,” said Viscelli, an economic and political sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Big Rig: Trucking & the Decline of the American Dream.

That book featured some serious, on-the-ground research, with Viscelli driving thousands of miles in a Class 8 truck. He’s currently at work on another book about trucking, this time about autonomy and automation.And yeah, he’s pretty pessimistic about the self-driving future, at […]

Of The 10 Fastest-Growing U.S. Jobs, 7 Pay Less Than $34,000 A Year

Of The 10 Fastest-Growing U.S. Jobs, 7 Pay Less Than $34,000 A Year

Many occupations are projected to see significant growth in the next decade but most of the fastest-growing U.S. jobs will not pay a living wage. Most of the fastest-growing jobs in the U.S. pay less than a living wage, with seven of them earning an average of $34,000 a year, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Employment is expected to grow at a rate of 0.5 percent with about 8.4 million new jobs created between 2018 and 2028. That is slower than the 0.8 percent annual payroll growth in the previous decade.

Most of the new growth […]

Presidential Candidate Proposes Automation Agency to Save Jobs: Will It Work?

Presidential Candidate Proposes Automation Agency to Save Jobs: Will It Work?

Image by Office of Bill de Blasio via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en)) On September 5th, presidential candidate and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio published in tech magazine Wired that if elected president, he would “issue a robot tax for corporations displacing humans, and create a federal agency to oversee automation.”

De Blasio is a longshot for even the Democratic nomination—much less the presidency— polling at less than one percent . But his professed concerns about employment losses due to technological innovation and automation aren’t unusual, particularly among those younger than 25. But a new federal agency dedicated to […]

Automation to Lead Over 20 Million Russian Workforce at Risk of Job Loss by 2030

Automation to Lead Over 20 Million Russian Workforce at Risk of Job Loss by 2030

According to a new research from the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), almost half of the Russian workforce, over 20 million people, are at risk of losing their jobs to digitization and automation by 2030.

The study noted that workers in industries including 73 percent in hotels and restaurants, 60 percent in manufacturing, and 58 percent in agriculture are most at risk of being replaced by automation. Moreover, 57 percent in transportation and warehousing, 53 percent in retail trade and 51 percent in mining will lose their job.

In a statement, the research author Stephen Zemtsov […]

The treasurer claimed the gender pay gap has closed. Job done! Except for the facts

The treasurer claimed the gender pay gap has closed. Job done! Except for the facts

Fellow feminists, rejoice! According to no less an authority than the treasurer of Australia, “…the gender pay gap has closed”. Josh Frydenberg said so, on Monday, in Question Time. It’s in Hansard, so it must be true.

Job done! We can all stop with the time-consuming advocacy and agitation, and just hit the shops to start spending the extra $241.50 per week we’re getting in our pay packets now that the government has brought our earnings into line with the blokes. Hurrah!

Except … not so much. It’s not true, as minister for women Marise Payne made clear in the Senate […]

The digital economy is capitalism’s sparkling creation or its undertaker: Former PM Keating

The digital economy is capitalism's sparkling creation or its undertaker: Former PM Keating

Image: Chris Duckett/ZDNet Australian former Prime Minister Paul Keating has likened the world the kids of today are stepping into to a shallow carp pond, saying it’s going to require imagination to determine how they’re going to make themselves useful.

Opening his SAP Ariba keynote in Sydney on Tuesday, Keating said the biggest challenge for Australia over the next few years would be human capital.

While he said the emergence of technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation might take jobs as collateral, "it may well do other things" for the economy, and he has faith in the Australian […]

Robots Won’t Take Away All Our Jobs, MIT Report Finds

Robots Won't Take Away All Our Jobs, MIT Report Finds

A robot and a human (Jesse Costa/WBUR) The robots are coming, but not necessarily for your job.

The likelihood that robots, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) will completely wipe out large swaths of the workforce is exaggerated, a new MIT report finds.

Get the latest news Boston is talking about sent to your inbox each day. Subscribe here .The report , from MIT’s "Work of the Future" task force, examines the relationship between technology and work, drawing on research from more than 20 faculty members.There’s no doubt technology will impact jobs, but researchers say there is a larger concern when it […]

Taxing Robots Is a Great Way to Make People Poor

Taxing Robots Is a Great Way to Make People Poor

(Bloomberg Opinion) — Of all the ideas that presidential candidates are offering to address the country’s economic woes, here’s one of the worst: Taxing, or even outlawing, automation.

Many people worry about the prospect of automation causing mass unemployment. This might be justified in the science-fiction future, if machines learn to do anything a human can do. But there’s no sign that the robot takeover is happening anytime soon.

First of all, despite rapid progress in industrial automation, most Americans still have jobs. This means that the economy is creating plenty of new jobs to compensate for those eliminated by robots. […]