INTRODUCTION

Technology has already eliminated many jobs. One study showed that there would be 8 million more US manufacturing jobs were it not for industrial robots, each of which, according to another study, replaces 6.1 jobs (and that doesn’t include the associated reduction in supervisors and human resource support workers). 

The future looks even bleaker. Forecasts suggest that 15 million jobs in the UK and another 12 million jobs in US manufacturing will be eliminated. And then there are truck drivers, the #1 job in many industrialized societies, who will be replaced by autonomous vehicles, etc. Jobs for 40% of millennials and for everyone without a college degree are at risk. Our Wall of Worry lists over 90 jobs that have a probable ‘end date.’

Those who are more positive about the future of jobs point out correctly that technology has been automating work functions for centuries, and yet the size of the workforce has continued to grow. This increase is primarily due to:

• Greater demand for products and services because of population growth and increased consumer wealth and access to credit.
• Improved functionality resulting in increased employment implementing new technology. While the new technology may eliminate the need for some jobs, there is often a net increase in jobs, even they may be in a different geographic area. (For example, jobs lost involved in the manufacturing of tape cassettes in the Mid-West of the USA were replaced by more jobs to manufacture compact discs in California.)
• New products and services offered by entrepreneurial activity, especially in the past 20 years from internet-based businesses.
• An increase in government involvement in regulating and taxing industries, and in regulating the use of human resources.

So why do we believe that this time the situation is different?

The main reason is that, sometime in the next few years, our Western society will start paying the price for the ever-increasing government, corporate, and personal debts, almost none of which has been used to invest in productive activity. Corporate and personal bankruptcies will trigger a massive drop in share prices (or maybe it will be the other way around), and many employees will become unemployed. When eventually the economic cycle reverses, and the surviving and new businesses start growing, they will do so using new technologies and involving fewer human workers.

Even before that, while the supply of jobs continues to decrease, the availability of workers will continue to increase, due to competition from workers throughout the world (communication technology makes the physical location of workers increasingly irrelevant) and due to longer working years (health care technology will lengthen the useful working life of current workers).

A third reason is that technology has been increasing exponentially for over a century, and the current pace of technological change is greater than it has ever been, and many of the changes impact all industries. Once an area has been automated, the increasing capability of AI and robotics will enable new work functionality (even functionality for new technology) to be automated immediately (eliminating any new technology adoption delay), while robots will be training other robots (as they have already started to do).

Of course, a few new jobs will be created, but they will be far less than the eliminated jobs and will require a much greater skill level. (This is the primary reason why those with less than a college degree are expected to be unemployable.) And the moment that a new job is created, someone somewhere will start to automate it.

The Introduction to the webpage on Universal Basic Income discusses why automated work functions not only eliminates jobs but also reduces the value of human labor. While most industrial and commercial jobs will be automated, there will still be work (or artistic activities) for us to do – they just won’t be paid jobs. We use the term ‘PAID-JOBLESSNESS’ to emphasize what is disappearing. Most people will still want to spend their time productively. (Well, maybe not everyone!) In effect, most workers will be volunteers, changing the meaning of ‘a job’, and enhancing the current description of volunteers as ‘unpaid workers’.

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