Credit: Blutgruppe/Corbis
In the 1800s it was the Luddites smashing weaving machines. These days retail staff worry about automatic checkouts. Sooner or later taxi drivers will be fretting over self-driving cars.
The battle between man and machines goes back centuries. Are they taking our jobs? Or are they merely easing our workload?
A study by economists at the consultancy Deloitte seeks to shed new light on the relationship between jobs and the rise of technology by trawling through census data for England and Wales going back to 1871.
Their conclusion is unremittingly cheerful: rather than destroying jobs, technology has been a “great job-creating machine”. Findings by Deloitte such as a fourfold rise in bar staff since the 1950s or a surge in the number of hairdressers this century suggest to the authors that technology has increased spending power, therefore creating new demand and new jobs.
Their study, shortlisted for the Society of Business Economists’ Rybczynski prize, argues that the debate has been skewed towards the job-destroying effects […]
But in recent decades America has been exporting jobs faster than technology has created them.
Temporary and part-time jobs have risen dramatically promoting inequality. This is a poor study.
Part of the problem is the world has become more complex, but people haven’t gotten that much smarter, and arguably, aren’t being educated very well. Thus, a smaller percentage are able to participate fully in modern economic life. Ref the quality of this study, my question would be whether the job growth allegedly due to technology has kept pace with population growth. Phrased differently, have the available jobs PER CAPITA increased?
Quoting from the article; “the 1871 census records that there were 9,832 accountants in England and Wales and that has risen twentyfold in the last 140 years to 215,678”
Without knowing the population increase over the same time, there’s no way to make use of that statement- it’s just data, not information. And while I would certainly accept that accountants have been necessary throughout most of recorded history, has a “twentyfold” increase in the number of accountants led to a proportional increase in per capita productivity? The article notes a significant increase in the number of barkeeps and hairdressers- again, while those activities certainly have some value, has their prevalence led to an increase in productivity? Or does it just mean that barkeeps now have someone to listen to THEIR woes when they’re off duty?