EFFECTS OF TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE ON EMPLOYMENT AND POLITICS | IE EXPLAINS

we all know that technology has

transformed and is continuing to

transform much or what was familiar to

us

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in fact these accelerating changes

perhaps the defining feature of our

times and explains many of the other

cultural and political transformations

around us most directly it affects the

jobs that are available which have

changed dramatically entire industries

have been created or wholly transformed

jobs have disappeared and new jobs have

emerged so how will this affect jobs in

the future it is undeniable that the

automation of many tasks will transform

the jobs that they will be available and

some estimates the half of jobs will

disappear as a result all this go much

further and think that AI or deep AI

will essentially raise most jobs if not

all except for those of the programmers

designers of owners of the robots

algorithm some robots will be able to

mimic every task including those that

have been hardest to automate from

taking care of the elderly and children

to building infrastructure as well as

all current white-collar jobs beyond the

hype and fear-mongering what does the

empirical evidence say the first thing

to note is that at some level or changes

so far have been part of processes of

transformation similar to previous

historical periods that have not had the

catastrophic effects on predict for

instance in the United States 41% of all

jobs were in agriculture in 1900 and by

2000 there were no more than 2% yet

unemployment is at the lowest level it

has ever been arguably the latest wave

of technological change resembles this

research suggests that especially big

technological advances generate many new

jobs as an illustration there are more

retail banking jobs now that when ATMs

were first introduced in the 70s cost

efficiencies generated by automation of

routine processes created opportunities

for greater investments

sales teams and others secondly however

it is clear that there are challenges to

the impact of automation on the labor

force differs by socioeconomic level and

will be concentrated in certain

geographies in what we know so far from

research of David author David own and

others there has been a u-shaped

impact since the 1980s on employment

levels whereby has been middle skilled

professional jobs that had been eroded

this has meant profiles such as machine

operators in factories of all kinds or

clogs in offices have virtually

disappeared by contrast there are now

more managerial level jobs and more

low-skilled jobs such as many in the

hospitality industry or in health and

the end more than they used to naturally

a lot of these jobs are concentrated in

industrial areas now post-industrial

since the 1990s - the most recent data

2015 employment in industry has been

reduced by a third in Western countries

going from example from 36 percent to 27

percent of all employment in Germany 25

percent to 20 percent in the US or 32 to

19 percent of all employment in Spain

what will the consequences of these

transformations be these aren't even

fades for different groups promised to

create ever-growing backlashes it is no

hard to reach the conclusion that a

large part of the turmoil in politics we

experienced from Trump - breaks it to

waves of nationalism across countries is

related to the dislocation of

traditional industries as an example in

a survey we did this year at the ie

center for the governance of change we

see that three-quarters of Europeans are

now in favor of very robust government

interventions most under any discussed

on the public domain such as forbidding

the introduction of more machines if

they will displace workers introducing

special taxes on companies that replace

workers or outright banning the use of

machines accepting dangers or unhealthy

tasks it is no all bad news though we

know some of what can be done in my own

research with collaborators at Stanford

and New York University we have

established that his

investments in higher education mitigate

the negative regional effects that

having high levels of exposure to

routine occupation since the 70s has on

the share of population that is employed

education especially investments in

community colleges tertiary post-16

vocational education really pays off in

terms of mitigating negative effects of

automation on employment moreover we

also show that these investments have

the effect of moderating their politics

of these disruptive transformations we

show that for us counties that spend

relatively more in higher education this

spending causes them to swing less

towards voting for anti-government

candidates such as Donald Trump from the

1980s to the mid 2010 we also show that

in those counties citizens are more

supportive of government spending higher

education and of government spending

overall presumably because they see how

effective government intervention can be

in mitigating negative outcomes in

summary then it is undeniable that there

will be many challenges ahead for jobs

and the many in the developed world

especially the middle classes have been

challenged and continue to be challenged

but we know at least the government

spending if well targeted such as an

investments that can directly create

opportunities for citizens has been

affected through the effectiveness in

creating opportunity it can serve to

moderate some of the positions that

politics has taken in recent times

throughout the developed world

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