AP Investigation - Technology Killing Millions of Middle Class Jobs

[spuwho]

The ongoing reduction in jobs for the working population is an interesting problem in that it is a type of joblessness which has never existed before in history, surely not on the scale we are witnessing.  The cause is I presume a result of new technologies and greater efficiencies in production or manufacturing, farming, transportation, robotics, and in the service industries.  I’m wondering about the relation between technology driven joblessness, and the necessity of an increasing socialism of some kind.  Will a kind of socialism become necessary to balance the needs of citizens against the technology driven lack of jobs for the workforce?

Ron,

Are you saying that this type of joblessness is driven strictly by technology, or that this scale of joblessness in general is unprecedented?

Unemployment in the 1930's easily beat the current rate. But it wasn;t industrial or technologic, it was strictly economic issues.

How much of today's joblessness is technology driven or simply driven by economic factors?

[JeffreyS]

I think currently the unemployment rate is more driven economic issues. However we need to look at the tech trend with open eyes and try to figure out what's coming and do we need to compensate for it.

[ronchamblin]

The ongoing reduction in jobs for the working population is an interesting problem in that it is a type of joblessness which has never existed before in history, surely not on the scale we are witnessing.  The cause is I presume a result of new technologies and greater efficiencies in production or manufacturing, farming, transportation, robotics, and in the service industries.  I’m wondering about the relation between technology driven joblessness, and the necessity of an increasing socialism of some kind.  Will a kind of socialism become necessary to balance the needs of citizens against the technology driven lack of jobs for the workforce?

Ron,

Are you saying that this type of joblessness is driven strictly by technology, or that this scale of joblessness in general is unprecedented?

Unemployment in the 1930's easily beat the current rate. But it wasn;t industrial or technologic, it was strictly economic issues.

How much of today's joblessness is technology driven or simply driven by economic factors?

I think that the usual cycling economy is causing only some of the problem, and that the major cause of increasing joblessness is the decades-long drift to greater efficiencies in manufacturing etc, and robotics.... so that more and more jobs are being eliminated from the economy.  This is new, and because it is new, it is not being met constructively by the comfortable power elites and the politicians, who seem to be unaware of the seriousness of the trend, or what to do about it.

There is no doubt that, by one way or another, the very least of needs, the most fundamental, such as food and shelter will be obtained by the citizen, by the man in the street.  The question is whether the politicians and the power elites will see reality in time so that the needs of the masses can be satisfied via job incomes, or, lacking jobs, via some kind of state assistance, a type of socialism, because if not from either of these, then the option of protest, of force, and perhaps revolution, is the only option for the citizen in desperate need of the fundamental necessities of life. 

“Chuck Norris invented the Internet so people could talk about how great Chuck Norris is.”

[Lunican]

313 million people in the U.S. and 7 billion in the world has never been done before so we are in new territory in that respect.

[thelakelander]

Creative concept for abandoned brewery: Conversion into an indoor farm



A long abandoned brewery in St. Paul, MN's urban core is being converted into an indoor farm that produces fish and greens.  Thinking about the original question raised about technology and jobs, this is representative of where I see things headed.  The days of simply graduating high school and landing a lifetime production job at the local steel or paper mill are coming to an end.  Yes, like the dinosaur, some jobs will become obsolete.  However, technology will also create new and innovative economic opportunities.  It's up to us on how willing we are to accommodate or fight creativity/innovation, and the job creation that comes along with it.  A part of this answer relies on taking advantage of existing infrastructure and building fabric to accommodate new economically viable uses.

Hamm's site will be aquaponics farm

The 105-year-old Hamm's brewery in St. Paul has been vacant since 1994, but it's about to get new life as an indoor farm that produces fish and greens.

Urban Organics hopes that tanks full of tilapia and racks lined with fresh lettuce and herbs will fill the old brewery by mid-2013.

But Haberman and his partners saw potential in the 105-year-old building, and they’re now transforming it into an indoor, urban farm. Most of the building has been cleaned up, and by mid-2013 there will be tanks full of tilapia and racks lined with fresh lettuce and herbs.

Urban Organics will use an agricultural technique known as aquaponics, a symbiotic marriage of aquaculture (raising fish in tanks) and hydroponics (growing plants in water). The nutrient-rich wastewater from the fish will be pumped to the produce growing on the racks above, and the plants then act as a filter for the water before it returns to the fish tanks.

The long-term goal is to generate 1 million pounds of food per year that will be sold through distributors to local restaurants and grocers. Eventually, some of the food will be set aside for food shelves and homeless shelters in the community.

Haberman projects that Urban Organics will make money within two years, establishing itself as a viable business in what, he said, has historically been “an industry of poets and pioneers.”
“From a revenue perspective the numbers look really good,” he said.

full article: http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/print-edition/2012/12/21/plot-for-farm-in-old-brewery-plows.html

[JeffreyS]

I am not saying the moment is upon us but at some point I believe efficiency and the ability to produce without much Human help will create a situation where we do not have as many potential jobs society needs as humans that need them. 

[thelakelander]

I'm just posing a question but what did we do before the industrial revolution? 

I don't know if and when we'll reach the point where we don't have enough jobs for society but we are reaching the point where specialized skills are becoming more of a standard requirement.  Even with the recession, there are trades out there that can't hire enough people because of an insufficient pool of talent possessing the needed skills.

[KenFSU]

How much of today's joblessness is technology driven or simply driven by economic factors?

Based solely on what I've witnessed first hand, it seems to me that when businesses first saw their lines of credit drying up in the wake up the initial collapse, they were forced to lay off employees, perhaps with every intention of eventually hiring them back when the economy improved. What they discovered, however, was by supplementing their skeleton crew workforce with improved technology (that didn't call in sick or require expensive benefits packages), they were able to maintain much of their output. When things began to look a little brighter, they were much more resistant to hire additional workers. For example, a company that I did some contract work for replaced six secretaries with one regional operator and some cheap call routing software. Everyone in those six offices picked up a little extra slack. Those jobs will never come back. 

And, of course, you've got a ton of once-invincible industries that have irrefutably been driven to obsolescence by technology. Netflix, with less than 4,000 employees (and shrinking as mailed DVDs continue to give way to streaming) has played a large part in eliminating the video store (including nearly 75,000 Blockbuster employees alone at its peak). It's probably safe to say that streaming movies alone have permanently eliminated 100,000 jobs. The losses have probably been similar for music stores, 3,000 of which have closed since the birth of iTunes. Travel agents, bank tellers, and law clerks are quickly going the way of the dodo. Cashiers and toll-takers are being replaced by machines. I'm not arguing whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, but as this trend continues, I do wonder where in the hell these people are going to find employment.

I completely agree with Ennis that there will always be a place in the labor force for those with highly specialized skills, but there is absolutely no denying that, at least in the short term, jobs are being eliminated or machinated at a rate higher than new jobs are being created, particularly in the service and manufacturing industries. I found the below graph (left side) from the Economist last year to be particularly alarming. Disregarding the blip at the peak of the recession, we can clearly see an increasingly inverse relationship where manufacturing output has increased while employment has decreased. In other words, machines are more efficient than humans in this (major) sector.



Even in highly specialized fields, with the widespread availability of student loans, we are approaching a point where we may find ourselves with a greater supply of lawyers, for example, than the market actually demands (50% of new graduates won't find full-time employment within a year). Ditto nurses. Or new MBAs. Architects are being advised by some universities to change majors because their job outlook is so poor. I've got a friend who's been trying for three years to get a teaching job.

I just don't know if we can call the technological revolution (combined with the economic downturn) an apples to apples comparison with the prosperity brought on in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. In many ways, we've perhaps advanced more in the last 20 years than in the entirety of human history before. The Industrial Revolution may have brought the advent of the cotton gin, loom, and steam engine, but the technological revolution has allowed the average citizen to carry the sum of all human knowledge with them in their front pocket. And advancement has just been so rapid and so exponential in the last ten years in particular that I worry sometimes that we really haven't sat down and had a thorough enough discussion about the long-term implications it will have on human utility. 3D printing, in particular, has the potential to be a game changer the likes of which we have never seen.

I kind of fear a medium-term future where the demand for work continues to far outpace a stagnating supply of jobs, causing a race for the bottom in wages and a dramatic shift in job quality where a bachelors is required to work at Starbucks, a masters is required to get entry level employment, and everyone else is shit out of luck.

[ronchamblin]

The ongoing reduction in jobs for the working population is an interesting problem in that it is a type of joblessness which has never existed before in history, surely not on the scale we are witnessing.  The cause is I presume a result of new technologies and greater efficiencies in production or manufacturing, farming, transportation, robotics, and in the service industries.  I’m wondering about the relation between technology driven joblessness, and the necessity of an increasing socialism of some kind.  Will a kind of socialism become necessary to balance the needs of citizens against the technology driven lack of jobs for the workforce?


"Chuck Norris is always on top during sex because Chuck Norris never f*cks up."

actually this is just factually incorrect.  This type of labor displacement has happened a number of times over the centuries.  Each era has had a different outcome, depending on the response o the people, general health and politics of the time.

Interesting comments KenFSU.  And Stephen, upon reading my paragraph, I can see that it is vague, and fails to make the point I thought I had in mind.  Perhaps my attempt to clarify will reveal that I had no valid point in the first place.  Let’s see.

I suppose that I must explain why, when you say that, “each era has had a different outcome”, allows me to say that the outcome of our current situation will be so extremely different that we will be forced to make an extreme and intentional reaction to it, and perhaps to look increasingly to some kind of socialism to balance out the supply / demand (need) dynamic.   

The paragraph you’ve questioned consists of two points, the first being a suggestion that new technologies will destroy jobs for the workforce, and the second is a question about the necessity of a kind of socialism to distribute needed items to those who’s jobs were destroyed by the “system”.  I think that you and theLakelander have questioned the first.

I think the phrase I intended to be significant is.. “a type of joblessness which has never before existed in history”.  Whereas the former cycles of increasing technologies, from ancient times through the industrial revolution, produced such a large increase in the types of products, and satisfied so many more consumer needs, some of which were created by the marketplace, that it also created more jobs which were needed to produce the exploding types of new products.  A balance was achieved.  An exploding variety of products in the service industry and the manufacturing of products for consumers was matched for the most part by more jobs to produce them.  Thus, unemployment cycled safely between 4 and 9 percent.

The difference now is that centuries of society’s increasing abilities to create new products and services for human consumption has reached a point where there are fewer new products to excite human needs; that is, which cannot be produced by simply changing the program on a computer or robot controlled manufacturing process.  The problem is that there is less need for “workers” to enter the manufacturing process, the farming process, the design process, or the distribution process, because we are entering an era where any changes to products will be via computers, software, and robotics.

Why are less workers needed now in the economic process as compared to decades or centuries ago? First, the degree of efficiency as a result of computer software and robotics, is zooming upward, and secondly, whereas in the nineteenth century, the potential for the introduction of new products for human consumption was almost unlimited, there are today fewer new product types which can excite the human desire or need for acquisition of them.

Genuinely new items for human consumption are rare these days, so marketers and manufacturers are now limited to changing colors, shapes, textures, costs, and qualities of products which have been around for many decades.  The problem is that these changes occur within an automated manufacturing process, run increasingly by robots, and designed by software which is monitored and tuned by the computer gurus, the fallout being that the process needs less and less workers to design, manufacture, and deliver the products to the consumer.

And look at the efficiencies in information supplied by the Internet.  One can learn, communicate, play, entertain, and work from one’s home; and all with an efficiency unheard of three decades ago.


The process of evolution has caused improvements in all areas of society so that products and processes have reached, if not perfection, at least at times approaching a dead end in design.  How many ways can one design a brake for an automobile?  The wheel has for the most part been perfected.  Visual and sound creation, transmission, and consumption is reaching a dead end.  We humans are being bombarded with all and everything in hopes that we can and will consume more.  There are limits.

I suspect that more of us, except perhaps the young, and then only until they are older, are looking at simplicities, questioning what is really needed in life.  I suspect that this attitude will include a tendency to avoid more of the fabrications and artificialities of the marketing and manufacturing industry, and thus will discourage the habit of consuming products which formerly provided jobs for the average worker.

Let me see.  Have I said anything to clarify my point?  Basically, we’ve run out of work to do, simply because we’ve made things too efficiently, and we are running out of new products that excite us to the degree that we continue buying at the rate of many decades ago.  The basics of food, shelter, and stability of mind achieved through the acquisition of knowledge, will be the important necessities and issues in the future. All else will be candy, some of which unfortunately might be bitter, or even poison.   


“The movie King Kong is loosely based on an incident in which Chuck Norris killed a 900-foot Gorilla and had sex with the Coors light twins on top of the Empire State building.”         

[Dog Walker]

Jeffery, not disagreeing with what you are saying.  Technology is having a huge impact on the number of bodies needed in many areas and given past history or technology advances like the invention of power looms which created huge slums in England and the mechanization of agriculture in this country which forced share croppers off the land and into slums in US cities, the process of adjustment is ugly and hits people with the least education and income.

You are right to be concerned and even alarmed.

[KenFSU]

If you're not familiar with 3D printing:

[Lunican]

The Rise of the Permanent Temp Economy

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/the-rise-of-the-permanent-temp-economy/?src=recg

[buckethead]

Heard a bit about that on NPR yesterday, Lunican. Very interesting.

I think where Jeffrey gets it right is in projecting there will be a greatly lessened demand for overall labor, skilled and unskilled. This includes many 'creative' type positions in the near future.

In the future, controlling the means of production will be as important as ever. It might be the case that a new socio-economic system is required, or a massive reduction in population. (By what means? This is a scary question... and if I have pondered it, so have those who are much smarter than me, as well as more willing and capable of enacting policies to such an end)

Will the new technology serve all of mankind, or just a few? If history is any guide, it doesn't bode well for the masses. (unwashed or otherwise)

[Traveller]

To see one author's vision for the future after 3-D printing, read "Makers" by Cory Doctorow.  The novel is actually available for free (legally) on the author's website.

http://craphound.com/makers/download/

[cityimrov]

I once walked to Walmart and realized that I could buy several shelves of stuff with one paycheck.  That was unheard of in the past.  I also know that one visit to the ER could bankrupt me.  Doctors are expensive.

Half the country is automating.  The other half can't.  The part that is automating is becoming cheaper.  The part that can't is becoming more expensive.