Technological Unemployment News & Discussions

User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6474
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: Technological Unemployment News & Discussions

Post by caltrek »

Kind of ironic that the paranoid conspiracy theory has it that white workers are to be replaced. As always, the culprits are made put to be immigrants, with little or no attention paid to mechanization (now being robots and AI).
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8663
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Technological Unemployment News & Discussions

Post by wjfox »

User avatar
Ozzie guy
Posts: 486
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 4:40 pm

Re: Technological Unemployment News & Discussions

Post by Ozzie guy »

I want to start tracking Technological Unemployment.

I feel like this isn't the best thread for it but regardless...

US Employment Rate

In December 60.10%
In January 60.20%

Australia Employment Rate

In December 64.3%
In January 64.03%


Global Employment rate probably best but I can't easily find it.

Lowest US has been since 1948 aka covid crash is 51.30

So low 50s = $hit hitting the fan.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/125 ... 20employed.







Now my mind questions if there is a better metric akin to hours worked but regardless using employment rate seems like a good enough metric.
User avatar
funkervogt
Posts: 1165
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 3:03 pm

Re: Technological Unemployment News & Discussions

Post by funkervogt »

The COVID-19 pandemic didn't cause the expected boost in automation.
Wonks had plenty of reason to worry. Recessions cause many companies’ revenues, but not wages, to fall, making workers less affordable. Some previous downturns had produced bursts of job-killing automation, depriving people of work and leaving them at least temporarily on the economic scrapheap. Covid seemed to pose an extra threat to workers. People get sick; robots do not. Past pandemics, research suggests, have hastened automation.

More than two years on, however, it is hard to find much evidence of job-killing automation. Rather than workers complaining about a shortage of jobs, bosses complain about a shortage of workers. Across the oecd club of mostly rich countries, there is an unusually large number of unfilled vacancies, even as recession nears. In many countries the wages of the lowest-paid, the people thought to be most at risk of losing their job to a robot, are rising the fastest.

To test the doomsters’ predictions more directly, we dug into occupational data for America, Australia and Britain. Borrowing a methodology developed by the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis, we divided occupations into “routine” and “nonroutine” buckets. Routine jobs involve repetitive movements, which can be more easily learned by a machine or computer, making them in theory more vulnerable to automation.

Over time, and especially during past recessions, routine jobs have declined as a share of the workforce (see chart). But during the pandemic the rate of decline actually slowed. In the two years before the pandemic automatable jobs in Australia, as a share of the total, fell by 1.8 percentage points. In the two subsequent years they fell by 0.6 percentage points. We find similar trends in Britain, though a recent coding change makes analysis trickier. America today has slightly more routine jobs than you would expect based on pre-pandemic trends.
https://www.yahoo.com/now/pandemic-triu ... 49222.html
User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8663
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Technological Unemployment News & Discussions

Post by wjfox »

User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8663
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Technological Unemployment News & Discussions

Post by wjfox »

User avatar
Ozzie guy
Posts: 486
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 4:40 pm

Re: Technological Unemployment News & Discussions

Post by Ozzie guy »

US Employment Rate
In January 60.20%
In February 60.20%

Australia Employment Rate
In January 64.1%
In February 64.3%

I am starting from January 2023 so each time a year passes I can replace months for that year with the yearly average. It is also after covid recovery and before AI has any impact.

Lowest US has been since 1948 aka covid crash is 51.30

So low 50s = $hit hitting the fan.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-sta ... yment-rate
https://tradingeconomics.com/australia/employment-rate
User avatar
caltrek
Posts: 6474
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 1:17 pm

Re: Technological Unemployment News & Discussions

Post by caltrek »

Or, alternatively, signs of an aging population with effective pension and social security plans in place. Technology may thus be helping in the transition in that a lower participation rate in the labor force might very well be sustainable.

I do like your approach as a rough indicator of what may be happening.
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
weatheriscool
Posts: 12724
Joined: Sun May 16, 2021 6:16 pm

Re: Technological Unemployment News & Discussions

Post by weatheriscool »

I think we need to rethink the economics and refocus on UBI and do the basics with machines and A.i. WE either do this or most people will end up living in boxes on the side of the street.
User avatar
wjfox
Site Admin
Posts: 8663
Joined: Sat May 15, 2021 6:09 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Technological Unemployment News & Discussions

Post by wjfox »

Post Reply