How many jobs have been lost to computers and technology?

[kentuck]

I seldom hear that mentioned as a factor in our joblessness.

However, from personal experiences, I have seen many jobs lost due to the efficiency and productivity brought about by new technology.

Is this something that we are over-looking?

Has technology changed the workplace in a permanent way - which will force us to change the way we have lived our lives in the past?

Will there no longer be jobs for everyone?

Are the present solutions obsolete?

[littlewolf]

1. actually computers create jobs ...

Maint. as well as admin support ... programmers ... etc .....

[snagglepuss]

47. The question is where are they created? I think you know that. nt

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. Increases in productivity decrease the labor required.

If those increases in productivity improve the standard of living of the workers, then their demand will support the overall demand for labor.

If those increases in productivity don't, then yes. It's a life-or-death game of musical chairs.

[bluerum]

3. Hardware and software engineering, design, manufacturing. All the retail

opportunities. I'd say it is more a matter of adapting the economy. Too bad that a lot of theses jobs are shipped off to Asia.

[wtmusic]

4. "It was automation, I know...that was what was making the factory go..."

To the tune of "Fascination" (Allan Sherman). From 40 years ago.

It was automation, I know.
That was what was making the factory go.
It was IBM, it was Univac.
It was all those gears going clickety-clack, dear.

I thought automation was keen,
Till you were replaced by a ten ton machine.
It was that computer that tore us apart, dear.
Automation broke my heart.

There's an RCA 503
Standing next to me where you used to be.
Doesn't have your smile, doesn't have your shape.
Just a bunch of punch cards and light bulbs and tape, dear.

You're a girl who's soft, warm and sweet.
But you're only human, and that's obsolete.
Though I'm very fond of that 503, dear,
Automation's not for me.

It was automation, I'm told.
That's why I got fired, and I'm out in the cold.
How could I have known, when the 503
Started into blink, it was winking at me, dear.

I thought it was just some mishap,
When it sidled over and sat on my lap.
But when it said "I love you" and gave me a hug, dear, That's when I pulled out its plug!

[SidDithers]

5. Well, the abacus makers have been hit pretty hard...nt

Sid

[wtmusic]

6. There's only one answer to the abacus problem.

Subsidies!

[kentuck]

7. They ain't the only ones.

...

[Statistical]

8. Someday 2% of the population may produce all the physical goods in the world

Think it can't happen?



Notice that while manufacturing EMPLOYMENT peaked in 1979, manufacturing OUTPUT continues to climb. Essentially demand for goods has grown but it has grown at a SLOWER rate than productivity gains. Thus less and less workers are needed each year to produce the goods demanded. How is this possible? Automation, improving yields (% of total product that is sellable), and improved industrial processes.



In 1990 the average manufacturing employee in the US produced roughly $120,000 worth of goods annually, even adjusted for inflation today that is nearly $280,000 per worker. Is anyone here buying 2x to 3x as much "stuff" (physical goods) compared to 1990. Of course not. If anything the rise of services (telecom services, internet services, media services) means that the amount of physical goods we purchase is actually declining.

This really is little more than a continuation of a trend that began 400+ year ago. In middle ages it took roughly 50% of the population just to grow enough food to keep everyone alive (and routinely they didn't). Slowly we saw the % that agriculture makes of the labor force fall. Today one US farmer produces enough food to feed 155 people. From 1 farmer feeding 2 people to 1 farmer feeding 155 people. That may eventually rise as high as 1 farmer per 200 citizens. Four hundred years ago if you said that less than one percent of the population would produce enough food to feed the other 99% people would have laughed at you, however it did happen. Those productivity gains just kept coming and never stopped. It wasn't a single event but rather a creeping gain over the course of centuries.

Now the rise of computer aided design, robotics, and eventually nanotechnology may do the same thing to manufacturing. Not overnight but maybe over next 400 years, it certainly is possible. The real societal question is what do we do about it?

[kentuck]

10. Very telling.

There was a story on 60 Minutes or some TV show recently that showed how a new KIA automobile was manufactured. It was made almost entirely without any human labor.

[PSPS]

21. What about a graph comparing mfg output per worker to worker wage?

That's where the scandal is. Your graph shows output per worker going up 350% (adjusted for inflation.) During the same period, wages have been flat or declining (adjusted for inflation) except, of course, for the "have mores."

[Statistical]

22. I agree that has been a scam. There is a chart around that shows that.

I will see if I can find it.

On edit: found it.



The wages/productivity correlation broke around 1980 and has been decoupled ever since.

That is a seperate issue but even IF wages had remained coupled to productivity it wouldn't change the fact that less workers are needed. Of course the fact that less workers are needed is a large reason why they decoupled. Less workers needed means more potential unemployment. When other sectors couldn't absorb job losses it created slack in manufacturing labor. Hard to push for 7% wage increase when there are 1.2 million unemployed manufacturing workers who would gladly take the job.

[PSPS]

38. Thanks again to saint ronnie

This disparity began in the 1980's with reagan's slashing the top tax rate by half.

Don't be so sure about there being less need for people because of productivity gains. Thanks to reagan's "trickle down" charade (apparently embraced by Obama,) the government was starved of resources to do what it had been doing in the past, such as maintain infrastructure and fund research. When that well ran dry (drown in a bathtub,) we see the result all around us: crumbling roads and bridges, foreign countries overtaking us in research, etc. All of this kind of work requires people, not robots. And as the population grows, the need for these things increases.

[kentuck]

23. Here it is:

It's been flat since about the late 1970's or early 80's..

[BlackHoleSon]

59. "Collapse"

The movie, I know it has its problems, but it does touch effectively on petroleum as the catalyst of the kind of agricultural output you point to. Makes the point that without cheap oil those kinds of yields aren't remotely possible. Will agriculture require more people again as there are less petroleum products to dump on the ground for fertilizer and to run monstrous combines doing the work of 20 men?

[FLPanhandle]

9. Willfully choosing to less efficient probably isn't a great strategy in a global economy

Hey, Blacksmiths went out with the automobile...the world changes.

[wtmusic]

13. If we could just get everyone to go Amish

and get the Chinese to do it first.

[kentuck]

14. But that is only half the story...

Yes, we have to adapt, but corporations will continue to look for the cheapest labor anywhere in the world. Jobs that were created in our country have now moved elsewhere. Not because they were not making good profits but because they could make more profits with cheaper labor.

[former9thward]

19. We made automobiles.

And that is what has changed. We no longer produce the new technologies. They are made in the rest of the world and that is why we have such an unemployment problem. I know we can't choose to be less efficient but that is not to say we should ignore the problem. Computers have eliminated tens of millions of jobs in offices and retail (less so in factory manufacturing but there too). Where are these jobs being replaced? No, not IT, those jobs are a fraction of the jobs that have been eliminated.

[jody]

11. In general IT either automates labor intensive tasks or improves the decision making process of

existing systems.

From an economic perspective, any new IT change must produce benefits that exceed the cost of the change.

Sadly too many IT changes are sold with marketing hype and IT crap approved by corporate financial and IT VPs over objections of those with experience in operations and production.

IT also creates new business processes and ultimately new services and products. It is this area that has created new jobs and millionaires.

[cottonseed]

12. The idea is that productivity gains in one sector leads to innovation and new industries.

Our system of capitalism can be brutal. We allow old inefficient industry to simply disappear. Unfortunately for people employed in those industries, that can be disastrous. However, if we were to spend our energies rescuing old industry, the idea is that new innovation would be severely limited.

Also, as far as the US goes, anything industry that is not technology and capital intensive, which relies on paying real people to create things I think is doomed. For unskilled/non-professional the only thing I see surviving is local services.

[X_Digger]

15. The Buggy Whip Makers Union, Local #849 agrees! n/t

[kentuck]

17. And so does Local #49 of the UAW...

..who have totally replaced its workforce with robots. Thank you very much.

[Imajika]

39. You can't willingly remain inefficient to protect jobs...

You might get away with it for a short while, but in a globalized economy you'd just fall hopelessly behind.

Automation will continue to kill off large numbers of manufacturing, blue collar jobs. If you are in that field, you'd better recognize the world is changing and retrain for something else.

Communism, in theory, accepts massive inefficiency in order to provide fairness and equality. The result of those attempts are that the communist governments simply collapse or are relegated to basketcase economy status. It is no a accident that China's explosive growth occurred at the same time they essentially dumped their marxist command and control economic system.

The best thing people can do for themselves is continue training and educating themselves where the emerging technologies are concerned.

[kentuck]

42. Of course not..

Education and training can help some people but many are not capable of doing some jobs. From a government standpoint, we have to figure out a way to adapt to these changes and permitting people to survive in the process.

[madrchsod]

16. no jobs should be "lost" to technology

we lost jobs because it was cheaper to have foreign workers make new products than to make them here in the usa.

[jody]

18. "no jobs should be 'lost' to technology" but farm jobs were lost to technology. n/t

[Scout]

65. many jobs in printing were lost to technology, and they did NOT go overseas. n/t

[hankthecrank]

20. some Scifi shows us this

people walking on the beach with all their new free time

but pull back a bit and its people looking for dead fish or something to eat

because they no longer have a job (no income)

[Xithras]

24. Eventually, all jobs will be lost to computers and technology.

The march toward sentient computing is ongoing, and nobody seriously questions the assertion that we will achieve it within the next century. Researchers are already MUCH closer to the goal than most realize, and there have been papers published on sentient computers that already match the cognitive abilities of toddlers and intelligent non-human mammals.

The computer is faster than you, it knows more than you do, and soon it will have the ability to out-reason you as well. If they can out-reason a human, they can out-invent a human. The only thing they will lack are bodies, and there are a dozen robotics firms working on that half of the problem as well.

Capitalism will be dead within 10 years of the rise of the sentient robot. Who would hire a human, when a robot can do the same job in less time and with greater accuracy than a human, and can do the job 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without breaks, rest, or a paycheck?


All of this brings about some interesting questions. What do 7 billion humans do when there are no more jobs? How do they afford to eat? How do they buy the goods those robots are producing? How will we fund the government when income taxes evaporate?

Are we looking at a Star Trek future, where money becomes irrelevant and we simply give the goods to those who need them? Or are we looking at Player Piano, where most humans are forced to simply scratch out an existence and make a dollar or two at whatever menial task they find?

This isn't science fiction. Humanity will be facing this within the next generation or two. Heck, some of us on DU may actually live to see it.

[PeaceNikki]

27. Will they build and program themselves?

kewl.

[Xithras]

45. Yes.

That's what sentience and reasoning is all about. Once the computer can understand and comprehend its own code, it can rewrite itself, make itself more efficient, and create superior versions of itself. Humans won't be able to match the quality of the code they write. Evolution will do the rest. Our initial AI's will be able to look at their own code and puzzle out better ways to achieve sentience. That new code will generate better AI's. Those new AI's can then tackle the same problem, generating even better AI's. Every intelligent generation of AI will beget an even smarter, even faster generation...and the lifespan of each generation will be measured in hours. Eventually, after a few dozen generations, the AI's should reach an optimized state that will be far more efficient than anything we can generate, and should be far more intelligent than any human that has ever lived.

We, as humans, don't have to write the perfect AI. We just need to write a basic one that possesses the ability to reason, a modicum of inventiveness, and curiosity. The AI's will do the rest themselves.

And every computer programmer on the planet will instantly become unemployed.

[Dash87]

66. Allow me to completely disagree.

The statement that "all jobs will be lost to computers and robots" is like those people who said that DVD's would wipe out Movie Theatres.

A robot can do repetitive tasks, but it cannot mimic a human correctly. A robot can't act, be a waitress, or be an EMT (or the police - lol, imagine that :)). There will always be some jobs left for people. People will just have to study different things in college (which is a problem if nobody can afford college - our policies are making our society dumb, and therefore putting us behind).

We're a regressive nation because our whole attitude is, "Less people having jobs is a good thing! Our nation will fall behind, but what do I care? I'm rich!!! I'll just buy the stuff other nations make, which will be generally far too advanced to be affordable to the common person in the future. I have the world's smallest violin for you if you have something to say about it! Oh, did I also mention that all of my rich friends agree with me, and we have all of the power?"

[Xithras]

67. You're thinking far too small. And too short-term.

Robots are largely confined to repetitive tasks today merely because they are not intelligent. A modern robots activities must be pre-programmed by a human, which limits its potential applicability.

But the reality is that heuristic computing has undergone some incredible leaps over the last decade. While very little of the technology has made it out of the lab yet, we actually have functioning computers that can nearly match the independent thinking and creative abilities of a toddler. TODAY. The OpenCog project has the framework and software plans for a fully functional toddler-level AGI together already, and are seeking funding right now to build it. Even Google has the CADIE project up and running, which they have described as the "most important software project that Google has ever undertaken". It's goal? To develop a full AI with autonomous problem solving and reasoning abilities that exceed the capabilities of a human being. Similar projects are running in corporate and university labs around the world. This isn't scifi. This is real research that is occurring in real labs all around the planet...right now.

You may be right that robots will never be great actors (I have serious doubts as to whether computers will ever have emotions), but I disagree that they can't take the place of waitresses, or police officers, or EMT's. There are very few jobs that a fully autonomous AGI, coupled with an independent robotic body, cannot fill.

You're thinking:


But we may be less than 50 years away from this:


Or, at least, this:

[TheKentuckian]

25. Good insight, Kentuck. Even without the madcap outsourcing and nutty trade deals

We'd still have to adapt as a society to there being ever less work to be done as technology and other efficiency gains become a bigger piece of the puzzle.

Pride has kept many from seeing clearly how much of their own workload has been "make work" and/or redundancy. Full employment at full time hours is not something that can at all be expected as we move forward and that means a very different means of distributing resources must be put into place from the current increasingly faltering economy we have now.

We just don't have the need for everyone putting in 40 hours anymore and improvements in robotics and computers, not even accounting for nanotech will chip away at the need for labor both physical and intellectual with the passing of the years.

The people foolish enough to call for raising the retirement age now and more so in the future aren't considering the larger picture because the effort is counter-intuitive in light of long term labor trends and the direction of industrialization over the last 150 years or so.
To think we can put all this toothpaste back in the tube is arrogant and unthinking. The desire to make sensible trade agreements and slow globalization isn't a fix as much as stop gap measures to give us time to adjust to the new reality and to reverse some of the resource concentration.

[kentuck]

34. the first step should be to decrease the workweek...

in my opinion. At the same time, we will have to either raise taxes on the producers or trade tax increases for wage increases as the labor hours decrease. It will take leaders with vision to see what is happening.

[PeaceNikki]

26. lolz

And how many created because of computers and technology?

[treestar]

28. It created the IT jobs.

New technology creates jobs in one area and causes loss in another area.

[PeaceNikki]

29. Change and technological advances are bad.

lol

[kentuck]

31. I'm sure you will have the last laugh.

:rofl:

[PeaceNikki]

33. Since I work in IT, I guess so.

:spray:

[madinmaryland]

52. As we sit here debating it on the internet on DU!

:rofl:

[kentuck]

30. Yes, but...

It loses much more than it gains.

[PeaceNikki]

32. On what do you base that?

[kentuck]

35. IT jobs can be outsourced also.

Comparatively speaking, how many IT jobs are there in your workplace as compared to other positions?? In most cases, it is a very small percentage. Perhaps you are an exception?

[PeaceNikki]

36. IT is the backbone of every department at my place of employment.

And we're well-staffed. I don't think we're any different than any other company our size.

So, where do you get your data to support that more jobs are lost than gained because of "computers and technology"?

[kentuck]

37. I haven't seen any statistics.

That is why I posted. I simply do not believe computers and technology create more jobs than they lose - at least, not in this country. Perhaps if we added India, China, South Korea, Indonesia, and the Philippines into the equation, there might be more?

[PeaceNikki]

40. And I think that advances in technology generally create jobs.

I don't know what the point of this thread is. Are you implying that we should stifle ourselves from further technological advances? I think my point was illustrated upthread unintentionally. Buggy makers and blacksmith were edged out of the workforce or reduced when the automobile went into mass production. Abacus makers with the calculator. Barbers took a hit when surgeons were trained.

[kentuck]

43. That may be true...

but we do have an official unemployment rate of about 10%. Unofficially, it is probably closer to 20%. That is a lot of jobless people.

[PeaceNikki]

44. And you blame advances in technology? Not NAFTA or outsourcing?

weird.

[kentuck]

46. I'm not blaming - only stating what appears to be obvious.

Are you now saying the jobs are lost to NAFTA and outsourcing? What should we do about it?

[HopeHoops]

41. Oh, they haven't been lost. They're just all over seas now.

[OhioChick]

54. Yep n/t

[grahamhgreen]

48. You're framing so that you see it from the rich peoples side - Here:

The right way to look at is is how much has juman productivity increased, and why are we all not sharing in the benefits of our increased productivity?

Answer - because the rich people are stealing more than their fair share.

[Igel]

49. Almost all of them.

But you're just looking at the actual downside. You're ignoring the upside and opportunity costs.

If I have $5000 and spend them on something I may say, "Gee, I had $500. Now I'm left with a measely $0.34. Life really, really sucks." Of course, that ignores the stuff I bought with it. Perhaps it was a lot of bananas, 99% of which are rotting. All downside. Or perhaps I bought the equipment necessary to do a job in which I had to provide my own tools, and I start first thing Monday morning. Bummer. Income. I should also consider that I had the money in my wallet and wonder if losing my wallet this morning alters how I consider the expense--I'd have lost the money anyway.

In looking at the expense I have to look at what I got in exchange, is it useful or not useful? In buying one thing I deny myself the opportunity of buying something else. I also have to consider how useful the money would be to me, because like anything else it can be lost.

Technology has lost us just about every job. Fewer gatherers were needed once it was determined that one person could plant food for his family and harvest it. And those children who used to help plant the food by digging holes with their hands were seriously unemployed for a while after mom and dad invented the stick for making the holes for putting the seeds into. Fewer paid assistant hunter trainees were needed once it was determined that with that new nifty cooking and drying technology we could store meat. Everything was downhill since then, I guess, but we don't even want to mention the invention of money (and, approximately 1.93 seconds later, the invention by a nearby cunning teenager of credit when he asked for the newly invented cash as a loan against his allowance).

Yes. Technology has constantly thrown people out of work. If you're raised in the new "regime" and are trained or can be easily retrained for it, if you understand how it works and fit in, it's not a problem. If you experience the change and don't fit in or suffer from it, or are young and see the results of the change and assume that in the moderately idealized past everything would have been hunky-dory, then technology is a great evil. Not all technology. Just the technology that hurt you, which is usually the lastest big change. Whether it's domestication of animals and invention of a new kind of plowshare or AI warehouse inventory and picking systems, or anything in between--learning to make brass and steel, steampower, ships of the line, replaceable parts or the cotton gin. (And, yes, there was worker unrest at various points along the line with people asking, "Will there be jobs for everyone?" The answer is, as usual, "No--some people will not have the necessary skills or be in the right place. Otherwise, yes, most workers will still be employed in 1825"--or 1870, or 1900, or even 1933 and 1970 or 2000. The response is to look at how things are and find either a work or product need that isn't being filled that you can squeeze yourself and your output into. Just as the assistant hunter trainees realized that they could probably do a good business making precision arrowheads for the hunters that remained.

[kentuck]

53. Do you think it is no different this time.?

In the past, jobs were created to fulfill the needs of consumers. Will that change? Will there still be the need for jobs and what happens to those folks that no longer have jobs? Do we ignore them? Do we pity them? Or do we put them on some type of entitlement? Or do we create a job for them - one that is needed by the community or city? Which would be your choice?

[Warren DeMontague]

50. Pretty much everyone I know who isn't working at a starbucks does something w/computers & technology

I'm just not feeling the techno-panic, here.

[xor]

51. How many jobs have been lost to open source?

Damn commie socialist and their giving away stuff that could have been sold, thus creating more jobs.

teehee just kidding.

[Synicus Maximus]

55. A whole lot less than have been created

[Jamastiene]

56. Nice post, Kaczynski.

Perchance, who will you go to when your computer senses your animosity toward it and decides to give you a piece of its mind in the form of computer troubles? Even my little rural half horse burg has several computer repair shops that, yes, employ people...not to mention tons of IT and network administrators and other computer jobs galore. Take a few computer classes and get a job working with computers. Don't curse the candle and sit in the darkness because you don't know how to light the candle. Learn how to light the candle.

Computers aren't our enemies. The pure unadulterated greed, of corporations who refuse to hire workers or pay a decent salary because they can get it cheaper in other countries, is our enemy. Their greed causes them to look for the cheapest labor they can find. Our government facilitates that by making laws to allow them to get away with it. Computers don't have jack shit to do with that.

[kentuck]

58. I am Ted Kaczynski for asking this question?

...or just a stupid rube that doesn't know better? Thanks for your kind-hearted remarks. They will be taken to heart.

[bluestate10]

61. You asked legitimate questions that should be pondered.

Unfortunately technology and automation are like armaments, no one is going to disarm first.

[Shining Jack]

63. Answer number 2 is correct IMHO.

The OP have a vast knowledge of computers.

[bluestate10]

57. The alternatives are not appealing.

I have thought about the very question that you posed. I am a technologist (actually scientist and business person). From my perspective, I see computers and automation as absolute necessities if any US business is to survive. I don't see India or China, or any other developing country, stopping their march toward automation and computerization if we choose to stop ours. I see the solution as threefold. First, americans must produce fewer children, every ethnic and racial group must be encouraged to have fewer children. Second, primary, secondary and college education must include more "hard" subjects such as chemistry, physics, english, writing, algebra and elementary calculus as requirements for getting a general high school diploma. Third, efforts should be made starting around 8th grade to identify children that do not have interest or aptitude for the "hard" list of subjects, those students can be given aptitude testing then routed to trades where they can excel - please note, that if a child changes interest level and desire to pursue the "hard" subjects after being trade routed, programs should exist to catch that child up and bring him or her up to the level of peers.

While some will decry the solutions as elitist, detail analysis of the nations education system will show that typical classrooms have children that have no interest in being in a traditional class format, but should great innate ability at trade type activities. Society needs plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, machinists, tool and die makers, et all, as much as it needs classically trained scientists.

[REP]

60. Hot type, which was replaced by dedicated typesetters, which was replaced by desktop

Linotype (hot type) operators were out of job when cold type (phototypesetting) came in. Phototypesetters lost their jobs when desktop became popular. Phototypesetting is cheaper than hot type; desktop is cheaper than phototypesetting in equipment, software and wages of the operator.

[Scout]

64. the entire prepress process going digital wiped out hundreds of jobs

for strippers, plate makers, and press helpers in addition to destroying the honorable art and craft of typography.

and to those claiming that the printers will now need more IT people, i say BULLSHIT. it doesn't take nearly as many people to support the computers as it took people to do the jobs eliminated by the computers.

[REP]

70. Cold type use(d) strippers, plates, press, binders, etc

Granted, I'm a phototypestter who was displaced by desktop -couldn't afford to work for desktop wages, plus the the type handling suuuuucked - but at least when I was doing it, we had plates made like crazy. I was prepress, but I had to send stuff to be stripped often .... I know it killed a lot of paste-up, but since I also did pasteup and hated it, that I didn't mind so much.

Oh. Proofreading and QCing is dead, too. I see widows, orphans and rivers wide enough to kayak in in almost all printed material. Barf. Not to mention shitty tracking and kerning.

[Hippo_Tron]

62. Of course technology has changed the workplace

It's hard to do most jobs these days or even function in this society without basic computer skills, for example. That's one of the reasons I was so amazed that John McCain (admittedly) had no idea how to use a computer. 15 to 20 years ago you could get away with it. Today you really can't.

And yes we have entered an era where it's very rare that you can earn a decent living doing a job that requires only physical labor. As technology advances this is going to be more and more true. That doesn't mean you will have to be a genius to get a job. It means you need to get an education. And if our education system continues to be the complete failure that it currently is, then yes it's going to be a serious problem.

[Ohio Joe]

68. They wiped out my Dads job

He was a printer for the Bergen Record in NJ. When he started there as a teenager, there were hundreds of printers, and when he retired there were five.

The first time I, as a programmer, eliminated a lot of jobs was at Ames. I helped design, create and install their bank reconciliation system. Seventy people lost their jobs when we finished.

Yes, computers create jobs. Yes, computers eliminate many more jobs.

[ItNerd4life]

69. Before this recession, it was technology creating the jobs

and unemployment was at 4.5%. Amazing how simple facts like this are quickly forgotten.

Wages should increase as productivity increases, however our government won't put the
rules in place to force businesses to do this.