Automation Too Jobs

I am oftentimes asked to opine almost whether automation volition destroy all the jobs. Yes, nosotros speak almost tractors, which brought farm job from something similar 70% of the solid soil at the start of the 20th century to almost 3% today. And cars, which lay the Equus caballus drivers out of business. And trains, which lay the canal boats out of business.

H5N1 to a greater extent than recent illustration occurred to me. This is what offices looked similar inwards the 1950s too 1960s:

Typing Pool. Source: Getty Images

This is a "typing pool." There used to last basketball-court sized rooms that looked similar this, all over the place, staffed almost solely past times  women.

Then along came the copier -- many of these women are copying documents past times typing them over in i lawsuit again alongside a few sheets of carbon newspaper -- the fax machine, the give-and-take processor, the PC. And that's merely typing. Accounting involved similar roomfuls of women alongside adding machines. Filing disappeared. Roomfuls of women used to operate weep upwards switchboards, straightaway all automated.

This retention lives on inwards the architecture of universities. All the onetime buildings direct maintain empty hutches for secretaries.

If y'all are prognosticating inwards almost 1970, too someone asks, "what volition laissez passer on off straightaway that women desire to bring together the workforce, but component automation is going to destroy all their jobs?" It would last a pretty gloomy forecast.

What truly happened: Female project forcefulness increased from xx meg to 75 million. The woman somebody participation charge per unit of measurement increased from below 35% to 60%. Women's reward relative to men rose -- they moved inwards to higher productivity activities than typing the same memo over a hundred times. Businesses expanded. And no, 55 meg men are non out on the streets begging for spare change.


Civilian Labor Force Level: Women

Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate: Women

I'm simplifying of course. And sure enough or too thence people alongside specific skills -- shorthand, typing without making mistakes, too and thence on -- who could non retrain didn't create likewise every bit others. But the magnitude of the phenomenon is pretty impressive.

Update. So did women merely accept all the men's jobs? As MC points out, the manly somebody project forcefulness participation charge per unit of measurement did decline, from 87.5 to 70.0. That's a big, worrisome decline. But it's fifteen per centum points, piece the women's increment was 25 per centum points.

But fifty-fifty if women are moving inwards too men are moving out of employment, that does brand the illustration that y'all don't merely hold off at who has what jobs straightaway threatened past times automation! The typing puddle got improve jobs.

Please (please!) give-up the ghost on inwards take away heed the quest here. No, this is non a post service almost all the ills of the project market, too "middle class" America, too all the rest. Yes, at that topographic point are plenty. The narrow quest is, volition automation hateful that all the jobs vanish. In this case, fifty-fifty combined alongside a large expansion of the people wanting to work, it did not.



Also the manly somebody project forcefulness expanded from 45 meg to 82 million. So the thought that at that topographic point is a fixed lay out of jobs too if women accept them men lose them is non true.


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