Automation isn't wiping out jobs. It's that our engine of growth is winding down | Aaron Benanav
4Reported today on The Guardian Technology
For the full article visit: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/23/robots-economy-growth-wages-jobs
Automation isn't wiping out jobs. It's that our engine of growth is winding down
Aaron Benanav
Automation is a red herring. The wider environment of slowing growth explains low labor demand largely by itself
An army of robots now scrub floors, grow microgreens and flip burgers. Due to advances in artificial intelligence, computers will supposedly take over much more of the service sector in the coming decade, including jobs in law, finance and medicine that require years of education and training.
Will automation-induced job loss tear society apart? The question has even influenced the US presidential race. Candidate Andrew Yang blames automation for a long-simmering crisis of underemployment. He plans to hand out free money to every American citizen in the form of a monthly "dividend" of $1,000.
Poor job quality and stagnant wages are major problems in America and across much of the world, but it is wrong to blame these problems on an accelerating pace of automation, which is hardly in evidence.
Automation Cassandras often point to the manufacturing sector as the precedent for what will happen to the rest of the economy. It is true that, for the manufacturing industry, a jobs apocalypse has already taken place.
And this process is occurring across the world: according to the UN, the share of all workers employed in manufacturing is falling globally, even as industrial production per person continues to rise. This is the case in wealthy and poor countries. Yet it is hasty to ascribe these trends to accelerating automation.
While machines now make everything from shoes and shirts to cars and computers, there has been no significant uptick in the pace of labor-saving productivity growth in industry in recent decades.
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