Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Robots will not lead to fewer jobs but the hollowing out of the middle class | Larry Elliott

(MENAFN Editorial) iCrowdNewswire – Aug 21, 2017 Weak wage growth could already be a sign automation creating economy in which small number of very rich employ armies of poor Throughout modern history there has been a recurrent fear that jobs will be destroyed by technology. Everybody knows the story of the Luddites, bands of workers who smashed up machinery in the textile industry in the second decade of the 19th century. The Luddites were wrong. There has been wave after wave of technological advance since the first Industrial Revolution, and yet more people are working than ever before. Jobs […]

Minimum wage increases: The opposite of helpful

Minimum wage increases: The opposite of helpful

Like so much of the legislation that comes out of Sacramento, the hike in California’s minimum wage has been touted by Democrats as helping the poor while assuring businesses won’t be harmed. But, like much of that legislation, it’s likely to do the opposite.

In 2014 California’s minimum wage was $8 per hour. Today it is $10.50—a 31 percent increase in just three years. It’s scheduled to increase again in January to $11 an hour followed by annual dollar hikes until it reaches $15 an hour in 2022. That’s an 88 percent increase in the cost of unskilled labor in […]

Why I’m skeptical that robots will take all our jobs

Why I’m skeptical that robots will take all our jobs

Over at Mother Jones, Kevin Drum has a quick post rebutting the two worst objections he hears to the fear that AI-empowered robots will take all our jobs. The arguments are: If automation were taking away jobs, we’d see it in high productivity growth figures. But productivity growth is low, not high. Automation creates jobs, it doesn’t eliminate them. Just take a look at the Industrial Revolution. Drum dismisses these as follows. The first, he says, is meaningless, “because AI doesn’t exist yet.” He predicts that “we’ll see the first glimmers of true AI in about ten years, with […]

3 Major Trends Shaping The Global Labor Market

3 Major Trends Shaping The Global Labor Market

Unlike the topography of the country — born out of slow moving glaciers during the last Ice Age — the economic landscape is an ever-changing thing. The trends that come and go can be measured in months rather than millennia, yet their affects can be felt for years to come.

Now that we’re more than half-way through the year, it’s apt timing to look at the latest trends promising to influence the global labor market.

Jobs are going digital We have the Internet of Things to thank for this growing trend. As we expect greater connectivity between devices, the need […]

Want to cut healthcare costs? Try automation

Want to cut healthcare costs? Try automation

© Getty Images In the intense and ongoing debate over federal healthcare policy, the cost of prescription drugs has been a central and constant issue. Lawmakers from both parties have put forward dizzyingly diverse range of plans that aim to reduce costs and respond to constituent’s demands.

But there’s one straightforward technical tool for reducing drug costs that hasn’t appeared in the high-profile debate.

When it comes to manufacturing pharmaceuticals, Americans should consider investing in automation.It’s no secret: automation can be a dirty word in U.S. politics. It’s often synonymous with computers or robots taking jobs and shuttering factories. There’s some […]

Automation, Unemployment and Moravec’s Paradox

Automation, Unemployment and Moravec’s Paradox

Writing in the Guardian , here’s Larry Elliott on automation. The whole article is well worth a read, even if it’s too simplistic to argue (as he does) that the Luddites were wrong. Over the longish term they most certainly were. The industrial revolution paved the way for an immense improvement in living standards. But what that happy history omits is the fact that it took a while to do so, a phenomenon known as the ‘Engels pause’: In the first half of the nineteenth century, the real wage [in Britain] stagnated while output per worker expanded. The profit […]

How Self-Driving, AI And Robotics Will Transform The Auto Industry

How Self-Driving, AI And Robotics Will Transform The Auto Industry

The auto industry seems to be ready for disruption. It is an industry that has functioned largely without changes for the past hundred years, but with the emergence of technologies such as artificial intelligence, self-driving and robotics, the basic paradigm of the industry is expected to change.

Robotics, for example, has been used for a long time in the auto industry, but not at the rate that it are being applied currently. Tesla, the biggest disruptor in the automotive industry, has set the trend for increasingly robot-run factories.

The Tesla Gigafactory 1 is located at a site which was previously a […]

Developing a sense of purpose when your working days are over

Recently, columnists have been expressing concern not just about jobs, but the role work itself plays in our lives.

Automation, particularly computers and robots, have been replacing human workers in manufacturing and retail. Professional observers have concluded that as many as 42 percent of jobs will be replaced by machines by 2050.

And it’s not just the loss of income that concerns observers. It’s the idea that work gives our life meaning, and a sense of purpose in our lives. And simply not working will diminish us as humans.Well, where better to see how not working affects our well-being than at […]

Automation will not lead to fewer jobs – but it is hollowing out the middle class

Automation will not lead to fewer jobs – but it is hollowing out the middle class

Throughout modern history there has been a recurrent fear that jobs will be destroyed by technology. Everybody knows the story of the Luddites, bands of workers who smashed up machinery in the textile industry in the second decade of the 19th century.

The Luddites were wrong. There has been wave after wave of technological advance since the first Industrial Revolution, and yet more people are working than ever before. Jobs have certainly been destroyed. Banks, for example, no longer employ clerks to log every transaction in ledgers with quill pens. At this time of year, 150 years ago, the fields […]

When robots take over retail

The writing is already on the wall. Notice what is happening in the world of shopping, retail, stores, even malls. Let’s take cashiers as an example. Once upon a time, cashiers had to remember various product codes in order to identify the product at checkout. Then along came the scanner and the cashiers’ role transformed into a single gesture, the one that scans the product bar code. At some point someone realized that to do just that, one doesn’t need a dedicated cashier. Instead, we could ask the customers to scan the products at checkout. And thus, the self-checkout […]