Forget the recession, immigration and the mortgage industry collapse — when it comes to loss of American jobs, robots are to blame.
That’s the conclusion of economists who have studied labor statistics and increasing job polarization, a growing disparity in pay among low- and high-skilled jobs. A handful of studies from the spring and summer have picked up steam in recent weeks, and they raise some interesting questions about the economy in the days leading up to Election Day.
Manufacturing is still strong in this country — it's just that robots, not humans, are the ones manning the factories. If automation is the future of manufacturing, medicine and other fields, less-educated Americans could be left in the dust.
David Autor, an MIT economist, found in a study this spring that certain occupations that consist of routine tasks are more vulnerable to automation. (It's a working paper, and he last updated it in August.)
The new issue of Good magazine explains his findings bluntly: “The middle class is disappearing in large part because technology is rendering middle-class skills obsolete.”Autor’s study, conducted in collaboration with David Dorn of the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies in Madrid, classified tasks as routine or non-routine and graded occupations that involve those tasks. The Economist explains that secretaries, bank tellers and other clerks perform work that is highly routine, and thus vulnerable to automation and the loss of laborers. Jobs in this country are increasingly polarizing into high-skilled, high-paying jobs versus low-skilled, low-paying ones, and automation is a major factor, the study found.
A June study by European researchers also found the increased adoption of IT systems is driving the polarization. Industries that spent more on IT also saw the fastest increase in demand for educated workers, and the sharpest drop in demand for less-skilled workers.
In examining these studies, both the Economist and Good magazine call out our beloved PR2’s laundry-folding and beer-fetching capabilities, noting that an army of domestic helper ‘bots could eliminate the need for low-skilled workers. And it’s a fair question: When robots start doing dishes, washing our hair and even keeping tabs on our health, what will happen to domestic workers and hospice nurses?
That's probably a long way off, as industrial robots still make up the vast majority of automated laborers in this country. The recession has taken its toll on them, too: 2010 was the worst year for industrial robots since the 1980s, according to the Fiscal Times.
Plus, robots can’t build themselves — yet — which means we’ll need workers to put them together. Yes, roboticists are generally more educated than the rest of the middle class, but this can be viewed as an opportunity. The Economist notes that for most of the last century, people’s job prospects rose commensurate with their education. The future will have room for robots and people, as long as we’re smart about it.
In any case, just be glad they’re not goats.
138 years of Popular Science at your fingertips.
Stay up to date on the latest news of the future of science and technology from your iPhone with full articles, images and offline viewing
Featuring every article from the magazine and website, plus links from around the Web. Also see our PopSci DIY feed
Share links with friends, comment on stories and more
This month, a look at extreme new habitats for a changing world, growing your own spare lung, the world's most dangerous weather, and a crash course on memory drugs.
Read the issue here.
Editor: John Mahoney | Email
Associate Editor: Paul Adams | Email
Assistant Editor: Dan Nosowitz
Contributing Writers:
Clay Dillow | Email
Rebecca Boyle | Email
Denise Ngo
Intern:
Julie Beck
So, what else is new? Everyone should have seen this coming.
That is the price of progress. You either adapt or get left behind. With the advances to nanofabrication and 3d printing in the next half a century, manual labor will be obsolete. That is reality, and every parent should strive to give their children a useful education.
In addition to scientists and engineers, we will need social scientists, politicians, ethicists and specialized philosophers, artists of all kinds, and medical professionals. The time where you can make a good living doing simple menial jobs is coming to an end. Governments should dedicate as many resources as possible to educate its populous. People should accept that times have changed and that they must change with them.
Maybe then, when everyone is educated, and knowledge is king, ignorance and superstition will disappear. Maybe that is what is required for a new age of enlightenment.
Interesting study, though it should come as no surprise that technological innovations spur changes to the skills required of the labor force. It's been happening for thousands of years.
I'm suspicious of the claim that "The middle class is disappearing in large part because technology is rendering middle-class skills obsolete." It's probably true in the manufacturing sector, probably not in other sectors. Also, what's considered "middle class?" And have they factored out other impacts like upward changes in economic status, rising minimum wage, unionization, immigration, importing cheaper manufactured goods, and large-scale changes to the economy? For example, the U.S. dominated manufacturing during the Industrial Revolution, but not anymore. (Yet we're still the largest and wealthiest economy per capita on earth; which is a direct result of our free market system.)
By the way, there are still an awful lot of skilled jobs that don't require a college education. Auto mechanic, plumber and electrician come to mind; all of which can make more than $50k. I doubt that low-skill or trade and craft jobs will ever disappear though the number will probably fluctuate.
from montreal, quebec
Thats why we should stop taxing people and increase sales taxes...
This really should be a no brainer, and it's a good thing. Especially in places where your workforce is small and education is high.
And btw i would not call a plumber, or electrician, or bricklayer or any trade job an uneducated job, they require intelligence and work ethic like any other (when done properly), just the classroom is not a room with tables, but there job.
Were there knot sew grate hat spilling, write.
I sincerely doubt if any of those tasks can yet be performed automatically. The things in jeopardy are the retail jobs that were keeping kids out of college. It doesn't take a great deal of skill to sell someone a bar of soap.
this is not news.
Don't know that I agree with this premise. I just recently read an article on job outlook -- middle class jobs were disappearing because of the recession -- BUT, they were mainly mid level supervisory/manager positions that companies have been trying to eliminate for years.
I never thought that manufacturing workers were middle class -- at least not beyond the low end of the definition. Middle class has traditionally been management and small business owners.
"If you lined up all of the economists end to end in a circle around the earth, they would still never reach a conclusion" Anonymous
what bothers me is that the jump from "low skill" jobs to "high skill" jobs is so difficult to attain for alot of people. Education is prohibitively expensive for people already in those "low-skilled" jobs. Especialy for those in the income range where they make enough to get by, but not enough to be able to pay off a loan, or have bad credit. add to that the fact that we can't exactly stop working to get that education because bills still need to be paid and schedualing classes around a full time job can be painfull.
Its more a matter of circumstances than intellegence for most people. why can't they make a robot that gives an affordable education and a diploma employers will recognize.
Really ? I thought all those greedy american corporations looking for cheap goods gave american jobs to the chinese in china.
http://traderwear.com/
15 paragraph feminine fashionable autumn outfit
Snow boots upgrade of
MaoXianMao + short coat + thin leg pants most loved
5 big trend
@#@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
I wrote a book on this subject in 1994 called 'The Jobless Economy' published by Polity Press in the UK.
Good to see the guys at MITT are catching up!!
People this a good thing. Cant you see that this is the future!!! The future is going to be a paradise. A paradise where no one has to work anymore because technology can meet our every need. This is the future folks so get used to the idea of not having to work anymore. Im serious you will see. 20 to 30 years from now nanotech and other tech will be so incredibly advanced that humans will no longer have to work. Except for the people in the government. Thing is when the time comes when everyone can just play all day everyday, we will still have to keep a close watch on our technology cause the system could be used for evil purposes. We will always have to watch our technology cause people or strong AI could try and use it for evil purposes.
But the future will be a paradise where no one has to work anymore we can just do the fuck whatever we want forever and live forever and never die.
They took er jobs!
Of course, along with robots enabling our happily ever-after, when science also enables the 500 year lifespan, we'll have to start colonization just to make room for those who refuse to be good citizens and upload themselves; thereby leaving the unnecessary husk behind to be mulched for new growth. This may be the answer to Fermi's Paradox. The reason we haven't been visited by advanced civilizations is that they've all plugged themselves into virtual reality and sublimed off their planets! But only boring people are bored, don't sublime and galaxy is ours!
You got it all wrong buddy. Science wont just enable us to have 500 year long life spans. Science is going to enable us to live forever, and in our youth too. We will live forever and not age a day. And for those of you who are already old well science will be able to reverse your aging and turn you back into your 18 year old self again. If 18 is too young for you then you can always revert back into your 30 year old self, its whatever you want!!!! Virtual reality will probably be one of the most exciting things man will create but its not going to consume my life. I know I'll be using virtual reality often but i will still always come back to reality. Theres still alot to be done in the real world. Like exploring every last cubic yard of the Universe and figuring out how the big bang was started? Who or what started the big bang? Is there really a god? Who is the real creator of our reality?
From: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation
"Many-worlds is a postulate of quantum mechanics that asserts the objective reality of the universal wavefunction, but denies the reality of wavefunction collapse, which implies that all possible alternative histories and futures are real —each representing an actual "world" (or "universe"). It is also referred to as MWI, the relative state formulation, the Everett interpretation, the theory of the universal wavefunction, many-universes interpretation, or just many worlds."
And the latest:
From: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle
"The holographic principle (the universe postulated as a hologram) is a property of quantum gravity and string theories which states that the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a boundary to the region—preferably a light-like boundary like a gravitational horizon. First proposed by Gerardus 't Hooft, it was given a precise string-theory interpretation by Leonard Susskind."
Gravity wave detectors may soon confirm this theory by detecting the necessarily scaled up Planck length as noise within the signal. Since the volume of the observable universe is much larger than its enclosing surface, to have the same number of bits inside the universe as on the boundary, the universe within must be made up of grains much larger than the calculated Planck length. That is: the grainyness of reality, like the pixelation of photographic images, may soon be detectable and within the purview of science.
Ain't we got fun?”
um, BTW, William of Occam, a 14th century Dominican who also taught at Oxford, first formulated Occam's Razor as "Unknown entities cannot be introduced in order to explain other unknown entities".
Introducing God (an unknown entity) to explain the ultimate unknown (why anything exists instead of nothing at all) is to introduce an unknown to explain an unknown and this has been a known no-no for seven hundred years. A simpler explanation is that, for some reason, nothing at all is unstable and that a creator is, therefore, just another theory, and not a given.
Well who knows man maybe we are all just a big computer world. Who knows. Kinda like the matrix maybe we are just all computer programs yet we dont know it. You know we could all be computer programs and not even know it. I think in the end we are all going to be fucking amazed at what we find out. the truth will be mind blowing thats why i want to live forever so i can find out how everything ends. Life is a like a soap opera, i wanna watch it till the very last episode. But yeah dont you think that Popsci should do a front page article on the possibility of a future of no work? A future where all our machines do all our work for us. I think its quite deserving of a popsci article. An article in the magazine though.