Earlier this month, I summarised new research from Henry Siu at the University of British Columbia and Nir Jaimovich from Duke University, which showed how routine jobs – those that are most sensitive to technological change – had collapsed in the US since 2001, leading to “jobless recoveries”:
One of the big puzzles of the U.S. economy is where the jobs have gone during the most recent economic recovery. How can it be that Real GDP and stock market valuations have recovered, and yet employment has remained flat, years since the end of the Great Recession? And how does this relate to the ongoing hollowing out of the American middle-class?..
Many of the routine occupations that were once commonplace have begun to disappear, while others have become obsolete. This is because the tasks involved in these occupations, by their nature, are prime candidates to be performed by new technologies…
The arrival of robotics, computing, and information technology has allowed for a large-scale automation of routine tasks. This has meant that the elimination of middle-wage jobs during recessions has not been accompanied by the return of such jobs afterward.
Now, in an ominous sign for the ordinary worker, the New York Times has reported that the shift towards robotics will not just replace workers, but also shift the balance of power well and truly to employers and capitalists, worsening inequality:
Yes, the machines are getting smarter, and they’re coming for more and more jobs.
Not just low-wage jobs, either.
Today, machines can process regular spoken language and not only recognize human faces, but also read their expressions. They can classify personality types, and have started being able to carry out conversations with appropriate emotional tenor…
But computers do not just replace humans in the workplace. They shift the balance of power even more in favor of employers. Our normal response to technological innovation that threatens jobs is to encourage workers to acquire more skills, or to trust that the nuances of the human mind or human attention will always be superior in crucial ways. But when machines of this capacity enter the equation, employers have even more leverage, and our standard response is not sufficient for the looming crisis.
Machines aren’t used because they perform some tasks that much better than humans, but because, in many cases, they do a “good enough” job while also being cheaper, more predictable and easier to control than quirky, pesky humans. Technology in the workplace is as much about power and control as it is about productivity and efficiency.
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Late last year, The AFRreported that 500,000 Australian jobs are at risk as automation swallows accountants, supermarket cashiers, secretaries, typists and bank tellers, amongst other professions. This report followed similar warnings from The Economist and The Atlantic that increasing automation, computerisation and artificial intelligence could place at risk half of current jobs in the United States within a decade or two.
If you are young, I once again cannot stress enough the importance of future proofing yourself against automation. While it is obviously easier said than done, try to study the new trends and consider shifting into fields that are less likely to be impacted by robotics and automation.
Start with the below lists from The Economist and The Atlantic, and then hope that there are no further technological breakthroughs that make your chosen vocation redundant!
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
