Category: Automation Impact on Jobs

Work in an automated future

Work in an automated future

Disruptive technologies are now dictating our future, as new innovations increasingly blur the lines between physical, digital and biological realms.

Robots are already in our operating rooms and fast-food restaurants; we can now use 3D imaging and stem-cell extraction to grow human bones from a patient’s own cells; and 3D printing is creating a circular economy in which we can use and then reuse raw materials.

This tsunami of technological innovation will continue to change profoundly how we live and work, and how our societies operate.In what is now called the Fourth Industrial Revolution, technologies that are coming of age — […]

Those Jobs Are Never ‘Coming Back’

Those Jobs Are Never 'Coming Back'

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – MARCH 06: A Volkswagen AG (VW) ‘Cedric’ self-driving automobile is presented during the Volkswagen Group Shaping The Future / Create Innovation event. (Photo by Harold Cunningham/Getty Images) A significant part of Trump’s campaign centered on the angst of the white middle class and the ongoing loss of jobs in the Rust Belt. And that focus gave him his margin of victory.

Trump promised to bring those jobs back, a sentiment that resonated powerfully with the electorate. The problem is— as we’ve talked about previously— that at least 80–90% of manufacturing jobs were lost not to companies […]

Six Jobs That Automation Will Eliminate

Six Jobs That Automation Will Eliminate

Automation is a very real thing and it is going to continually happen to jobs that take very little skill, and even a lot of skill; anything from monotonous office work to welding is being automated in large scale business, or will be soon if it hasn’t been already. I’m only listing one job specifically here, since copying and pasting the whole article is dumb.

Are you prepared to have your jerb taken? Robotic production lines are proliferating around the globe, specifically in Germany and Japan. Robot workers are safer and more efficient than their human counterparts and capable of […]

The Automation Upheaval Won’t Be Limited to Blue-Collar Jobs

The Automation Upheaval Won’t Be Limited to Blue-Collar Jobs

The Age of Automation

Much has been said about how automation will affect employment and the economy. In almost every conversation, the looming threat of job displacement is focused on a very specific sector: the blue-collar job market.

One frequently cited study published back in 2013 by Oxford University and the Oxford Martin School says that 47 percent of jobs in the US will be automated in the next 20 years. In Canada, a study conducted by the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship says that 40 percent of jobs in the country will be taken over by machines in […]

How Robots Could Help Close The Gender Gap

How Robots Could Help Close The Gender Gap

It seems like AI and robotics have become the favourite industries of venture capitalists, with some $5bn invested across 658 deals in 2016 alone. This is a huge growth from what was just a nascent industry in 2012 (which had less than $600m in investments across 160 deals).

It also seems that politicians have begun to pay attention, with the UK government having recently announced an investment of £20m in artificial intelligence research, including robots and driverless cars. The European Union has also been eyeing the topic, outlining the possible issues and therefore the need for EU-wide rules to enforce […]

Future-Proofing Manufacturing Jobs

In January, the Trump Administration made a promise to increase manufacturing jobs in America, and it ignited a surge in discussions, pundit predictions and opinion pieces about the industry’s ability to compete, grow and succeed in a new and uncertain future.

This conversation is important. After all, manufacturing is America’s economic engine: In 2015 alone, manufacturers contributed $2.17 trillion to the U.S. economy. Conservatively, based even on outdated definitions of what manufacturing jobs look like, manufacturing supports more than 18 million jobs. And manufacturers in the United States perform more than three-quarters of all private-sector research and development in America, […]

Personal Finance: Talk to the machine

Personal Finance: Talk to the machine

Bank of America received attention last month for announcing the rollout of fully automated bank branches. Three pilot locations will open this year, each about one-quarter the size of a traditional branch but with no one home. Think of a row of ATMs plus a couple of cubicles at which you can chat with a person via webcam.

This is the next logical progression in an inexorable trend: removing human interaction wherever possible. And it’s picking up speed. The most critical challenge for policymakers may not be Obamacare or tax reform, but how to retrain a workforce that is rapidly […]

The less work required, the happier we’ll be

The less work required, the happier we’ll be

A common view is that work is fundamentally a “good” thing. After all, if people don’t work, they’ll sit idle and not be able to provide for themselves. While the idea is simple enough, it has some powerful, albeit misleading, policy implications.

First, the accessibility of low-wage foreign workers through trade and globalization threatens the ability of Canadians and Americans to find work. President Trump has responded to these concerns by threatening to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Second, the “perfect” foreign worker that neither takes lunch breaks nor gets sick—automation—looms as a continual threat to employment. This […]

Automation isn’t the problem, capitalism is

Automation isn’t the problem, capitalism is

This robot is coming to steal your job. Graphic by Kelly Campbell. When it comes to depictions of futuristic societies in film and literature, science fiction nigh unanimously errs on the side of dystopia. So too do pundits – and nearly half of young people in developed industrial economies, according to a 2016 poll by Future Foundation – when the topic of automation of the labour force is discussed. Indeed, headlines often blare job losses to technological innovation in numbers that seem impossible: one 2016 report by the Mowat Centre, a public policy think tank, declared that a little […]

How can India create Employment in the digital age?

How can India create Employment in the digital age?

The global window for export- and manufacturing- led development is closing Marc Saxer Delhi

Ever since the Second Industrial Revolution started to peter out in the 1960s, global capitalism has faced a crisis of demand. Ironically, the strategies put in place to restore profitability largely aimed at the supply side: 1) the Rationalisation of production through technological automation aimed at increasing efficiency; more recently the digital revolution as the latest attempt to tackle the consumption crisis by rationalising the consumptive and distributive apparatus. 2) the Globalisation of production by offshoring, profiting from cheap labour cost in developing economies; 3) […]