New subject: Fwd: Automation Alone Isn't Killing Jobs - NYTimes.com

6 Apr 2014

Well I'm a software engineer now & I love learning .. I'm good at book
learning & am an autodidact so I don't think things are so bad for me in the
future 

But what about the rest of the job market? 
I've pondered this over the years. Can you retrain factory workers to be tech workers
very easily? Some people with experience tell me no 

Interesting article 

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

...
  From: Romy Snowyla &lt;romy(a)snowyla.com&gt;
 Date: April 5, 2014 at 11:08:50 PM PDT
 To: Romy Ilano &lt;romy(a)snowyla.com&gt;
 Subject: Automation Alone Isn’t Killing Jobs - NYTimes.com

 http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/business/automation-alone-isnt-killing…

 Automation Alone Isn’t Killing Jobs

 Although the labor market report on Friday showed modest job growth, employment
opportunities remain stubbornly low in the United States, giving new prominence to the old
notion that automation throws people out of work.

 Back in the 19th century, steam power and machinery took away many traditional jobs,
though they also created new ones. This time around, computers, smart software and robots
are seen as the culprits. They seem to be replacing many of the remaining manufacturing
jobs and encroaching on service-sector jobs, too.

 Driverless vehicles and drone aircraft are no longer science fiction, and over time, they
may eliminate millions of transportation jobs. Many other examples of automatable jobs are
discussed in “The Second Machine Age,” a book by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, and
in my own book, “Average Is Over.” The upshot is that machines are often filling in for
our smarts, not just for our brawn ― and this trend is likely to grow.

 How afraid should workers be of these new technologies? There is reason to be skeptical
of the assumption that machines will leave humanity without jobs. After all, history has
seen many waves of innovation and automation, and yet as recently as 2000, the rate of
unemployment was a mere 4 percent. There are unlimited human wants, so there is always
more work to be done. The economic theory of comparative advantage suggests that even
unskilled workers can gain from selling their services, thereby liberating the more
skilled workers for more productive tasks.

 Nonetheless, technologically related unemployment ― or, even worse, the phenomenon of
people falling out of the labor force altogether because of technology ― may prove a
tougher problem this time around.

 Labor markets just aren’t as flexible these days for workers, especially for men at the
bottom end of the skills distribution. Through much of the 20th century, workers moved out
of agriculture and into manufacturing jobs. A high school diploma and a basic willingness
to work were often enough, at least for white men, because the technologies of those times
often relied on accompanying manual labor.

 Many of the new jobs today are in health care and education, where specialized training
and study are required. Across the economy, a college degree is often demanded where a
high school degree used to suffice. It’s now common for a fire chief to be expected to
have a master’s degree, and to perform a broader variety of business-related tasks that
were virtually unheard-of in earlier generations. All of these developments mean a
disadvantage for people who don’t like formal education, even if they are otherwise very
talented. It’s no surprise that current unemployment has been concentrated among those
with lower education levels.

 There is also a special problem for some young men, namely those with especially restless
temperaments. They aren’t always well-suited to the new class of service jobs, like
greeting customers or taking care of the aged, which require much discipline or sometimes
even a subordination of will. The law is yet another source of labor market inflexibility:
The number of jobs covered by occupational licensing continues to rise and is almost
one-third of the work force. We don’t need such laws for, say, barbers or interior
designers, although they are commonly on the books.

 Many expanding economic sectors are not very labor-intensive, be they tech fields like
online retailing or even new mining and extraction industries. That means it’s harder for
the rate of job creation to keep up with the rate of job destruction, because a given
amount of economic growth isn’t bringing as many jobs.

 A new paper by Alan B. Krueger, Judd Cramer and David Cho of Princeton has documented
that the nation now appears to have a permanent class of long-term unemployed, who
probably can’t be helped much by monetary and fiscal policy. It’s not right to describe
these people as “thrown out of work by machines,” because the causes involve complex
interactions of technology, education and market demand. Still, many people are finding
this new world of work harder to navigate.

 Sometimes, the problem in labor markets takes the form of underemployment rather than
outright joblessness. Many people, especially the young, end up with part-time and
temporary service jobs ― or perhaps a combination of them. A part-time retail worker, for
example, might also write for a friend’s website and walk dogs for wealthier neighbors.
These workers often aren’t climbing career ladders that build a brighter or more secure
future.

 Many of these labor market problems were brought on by the financial crisis and the
collapse of market demand. But it would be a mistake to place all the blame on the
business cycle. Before the crisis, for example, business executives and owners didn’t
always know who their worst workers were, or didn’t want to engage in the disruptive act
of rooting out and firing them. So long as sales were brisk, it was easier to let matters
lie. But when money ran out, many businesses had to make the tough decisions ― and the
axes fell. The financial crisis thus accelerated what would have been a much slower
process.

 Subsequently, some would-be employers seem to have discriminated against workers who were
laid off in the crash. These judgments weren’t always fair, but that stigma isn’t easily
overcome, because a lot of employers in fact had reason to identify and fire their less
productive workers.

 In a nutshell, what we’re facing isn’t your grandfather’s unemployment problem. It does
have something to do with modern technology, and it will be with us for some time.

 TYLER COWEN is professor of economics at George Mason University.

 Sent from my iPhone 

Fwd: Automation Alone Isn’t Killing Jobs - NYTimes.com