Tag: consumption

IN BRIEF

JOBS LOST, JOBS GAINED: WORKFORCE TRANSITIONS IN A TIME OF AUTOMATION In our latest research on automation, we examine work that can be automated through 2030 and jobs that may be created in the same period. We draw from lessons from history and develop various scenarios for the future. While it is hard to predict how all this will play out, our research provides some insights into the likely workforce transitions that should be expected and their implications. Our key findings:

ƒ Automation technologies including artificial intelligence and robotics will generate significant benefits for users, businesses, and economies, lifting productivity […]

Automation could kill 73 million U.S. jobs by 2030

Automation could kill 73 million U.S. jobs by 2030

A new report from Paysa suggests automation jobs will put 10,000 people to work, and big companies will spend $650 million on annual salaries to make it happen. Sean Dowling (@seandowlingtv) has more. Buzz60 Automation could destroy as many as 73 million U.S. jobs by 2030, but economic growth, rising productivity and other forces could more than offset the losses, according to a new report by McKinsey Global Institute.

“The dire predictions that robots are going to take our jobs are overstated,” says Susan Lund, the group’s director of research and co-author of the study. “There will be enough jobs […]

Crises and Automation

(The Artificial Fabrication of Arbitrary Value, Price, and Wage Across Post-Industrial, Post-Modern Capitalism)

According to Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring , “the only value known in economics is the value of commodities”. 1 Commodities are products produced, not for individual consumption by their producers, but products produced for general public consumption. The value of a commodity, according to Engels, is determined via comparison with other commodities, namely, “they can be…said to be equal or unequal [with other commodities], according to the quantity of [general human] labor embodied in each”. 2

As a result, for Engels, “social conditions remaining the same, two equal […]

European Companies Are Investing at Home Again

European Companies Are Investing at Home Again

European business is coming home.

Daimler AG is planning to spend billions to get its German factories ready for an electric-car push. Property giant Unibail-Rodamco SE is expanding its shopping-mall footprint across the region and laser-equipment maker Trumpf GmbH has built a new distribution center in Germany to handle surging demand.

For years, European business has chased growth abroad, spending billions to build new factories in the U.S., Mexico, China, Brazil and other fast-growing emerging economies while investment in Europe languished. Now, as growth takes hold in Europe nearly a decade after the financial crisis, industry is investing in Europe again."What’s […]

China must grasp opportunities of new retail era

China must grasp opportunities of new retail era

Illustration: Peter C. Espina/GT

A new retail era is beginning, largely thanks to the upgrading of technology and consumption. Modern technology enables us to truly understand the needs of consumers and convert this information into the data needed by the production side so that more accurate predictions can be made. Based on this massive amount of data, the entire value chain can be more efficient in meeting the needs of consumers, and the supply side can be optimized.

To some extent, acting as organizers, new retail platforms can make the entire chain work more and more efficiently as they help manufacturers […]

Esquel – From making shirts to making a difference

Esquel – From making shirts to making a difference

An automatic needle inspection machine in operation at Esquel Hong Kong-based textile and apparel giant Esquel Group has made it its mission to weave sustainability into its core values, and across a vertical supply chain that spans every step from cotton farming to retail. Using fewer but more skilled workers, increasing productivity, investing in robotics and automation, micro-financing cotton farmers, and even selecting the whitest cotton fibres to reduce the bleaching process are among the initiatives outlined by managing director Edgar Tung.

"As an industry we have a bad reputation when it comes to sustainability," says Edgar Tung, managing […]

Economic Growth Is No Longer Enough

Economic Growth Is No Longer Enough

As new technologies subject the world’s economies to massive structural change, wages are no longer playing the central redistributive role they once did. Unless the decoupling of productivity and wages is addressed, the political convulsions many countries are experiencing will only intensify.

MADRID – Macroeconomic data from the world’s advanced economies can be mystifying when viewed in isolation. But when analyzed collectively, the data reveal a troubling truth: without changes to how wealth is generated and distributed, the political convulsions that have swept the world in recent years will only intensify. Consider, for example, wages and employment. In the United […]

Will you lose your job because of artificial intelligence?

Will you lose your job because of artificial intelligence?

Every week, whether in the press or blog posts, social media, and around our surroundings, we read or hear about artificial intelligence (AI) and its relationship with employment – and majority of that content tends to paint a negative relationship between these two subjects.

If it’s not Mark Zuckerberg advising tech giants to stop blowing AI dangers out of proportion, it is Elon Musk warning governments to regulate the sector before it gets out of hand or Vladimir Putin giving leadership to any country that leads in AI. But to the ordinary employee, the advancement of AI technology could pose […]

Automation creates jobs in Mexico, but it also reduces wages, new study suggests

Automation creates jobs in Mexico, but it also reduces wages, new study suggests

Automation in the manufacturing sector is more likely to create new jobs in Mexico than increase unemployment, however, the trend will lead to a decline in wages even when other countries have experienced the opposite effect, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Mexico combines significant automation in the automotive sector (accounting for 20% share of manufacturing employment in 2015), more modest automation in electronics (about 12% of manufacturing employment), and virtually no robot usage in textiles and apparel (9% of manufacturing employment), says the study (PDF format) .

In the automotive sector […]

Industrial robots and the new China Syndrome

Industrial robots and the new China Syndrome

Sean Culey Last year, China bought 66,000 industrial robots. This might not seem like an extraordinary figure for a country of over a billion people, but when you consider that each of these machines can do the jobs of 15 or more full-time employees, the impact begins to look more significant: it means that 66,000 robots could potentially do the work of one million people.

China purchased one-quarter of all the industrial robots manufactured in 2016. So, using these figures, we could make a reasonable claim that manufacturing jobs alone may already be falling to the machines at a rate […]