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‘Routine’ Jobs Are Disappearing

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Re: ‘Routine’ Jobs Are Disappearing

#81

Post by Ensorceled »

kefka wrote: post #75
Ensorceled wrote: post #65

There are a fair number of comments dismissing this issue with a "retrain or get left behind" and expressing not a lot of sympathy for those who don't. Remember, the average IQ in the US is just below 100[1]. Exactly what kind of jobs do you expect to retrain these people for? And how are they equipped to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps? Most of these jobs provided on the job training or apprenticeships so…

"Well, who cares if they're retrained. They're not inputting in the economy right now, and before was minimal at that. So why should we invest in do-nothings and laggards and lazy peoples? We'll give money to the people actually doing things, like CEOs and company makers." --- Is that a good attempt at this new era of pro-trump, anti-worker hatred? Edit: Seriously now? This kind of commentary is very much on-topic. B…

Pretty much. I think I need to read Atlas Shrugged again.

Re: ‘Routine’ Jobs Are Disappearing

#82

Post by monknomo »

vostok wrote: post #53
nickthemagicman wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineering and Medecine seem to be the only safe places atm.

Traditional elite jobs such as sales, banking (not trading), and management seem to have also resisted automation for the time being.

Assuming massive automation, and accompanying decreased employment and people-with-money, who is going to the bank, who is a prospective customer and who needs managed? Given sufficient layoffs the demand for these middleman jobs will also decline.

I mean, a workplace run by people needs a manager for about every five people. A workplace that runs robots needs a manager.

Salespeople only matter if there is someone with money to sell to. I suspect the direction we're going as far as they are concerned are automated goods warehouses that people buy from with self-checkout and a bored troubleshooter/security drone standing by the door. No more shoe salespeople. That leaves enterprise sales, which is a comparatively small footprint, in terms of jobs.

As to bankers, sure they'll be around, but I don't see traditional bankers to be exactly a growing field and they aren't really dying for new employees.

Nope, we're all headed towards serfdom, no two ways about it

Re: ‘Routine’ Jobs Are Disappearing

#83

Post by edblarney »

tptacek wrote: post #49
nerdponx wrote: post #2

Hasn't this been a recognized trend since the "jobless recovery" of 2009?

The actual research finds that this is a phenomenon associated with every jobless recovery (there have been 3 in the last 40 years or so): each time there's a recession that ends without restoring pre-recession jobs, the routine manual job market appears to take a permanent hit. Here's the chart from an earlier paper by the same authors: https://www.dropbox.com/s/782zelpi8r2nwua/Screenshot%202017-... So a big questio…

With jobs, there are big demographic issues, as well as the underlying shift of jobs overseas.

So it may have nothing to do with 'ups or downs' - just a long term secular trend in those areas.

Recessions just exacerbate the problems a little, possibly.

Re: ‘Routine’ Jobs Are Disappearing

#84

Post by dragonwriter »

knieveltech wrote: post #61
chrisseaton wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welding is also just about the least middle-class job I can think of.

That's only true if you define "middle-class" as white collar. Welders make decent money, 35-60k on average for bog standard fabrication work. Easy to double those figures working for the oil and gas industries. Welders that can cert to Nuclear industry standards can easily triple those figure, and underwater welders can make over $300k in a year.

"Welder's generally aren't middle class regardless of income" is true if you define middle class in the way it traditionally is in relation to capitalist and modern mixed economies, that is, the middle class are those for whom both capital holdings and labor provide a substantial share of their income, usually because they derive the bulk of their income.by applying Thier own labor to.their own capital (though the middle class also includes people working at wage labor for other capitalists who nonetheless have substantial-enough personal capital holdings to derive a significant share of their income from those holdings.)

Some welders -- those who own their own businesses or who have very substantial savings and investment as a result of long career -- might be middle class, but most (even if at or above middle income) are working class, deriving their income predominantly from wage labor.

Economic class isn't a categorization of income level, it's a qualitative categorization of the manner in which one derives income.

(It's become popular to use middle class to refer to some middle income segment largely as a political way of masking the near-total collapse of the classical "middle class" and polarization of economic class into working class and capitalist class with very little of the classic "middle class" left. But people like to feel like the middle class exists and is attainable, so calling the upper income segment of the working class "middle class" helps make people feel better. It also serves the capitalist interest in creating separation of identity and preventing solidarity within the working class.)

Re: ‘Routine’ Jobs Are Disappearing

#85

Post by metaphorm »

tptacek wrote: post #64
ergothus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the above poster, but their point appears to be that caring for the elderly doesn't CONTRIBUTE to the economy (i.e. as a transaction it adds to GDP, but in terms of value-creation it's near zilch. So while a blue-collar worker might add value by creating a product, an elder care worker adds only humanitarian benefit. (And unlike a doctor that can help those blue collar workers continue to work, there isn't even m…

That was the "logic" I took from that comment too, but it still doesn't make any sense. We spend money on all sorts of things that don't "contribute" (in this weird, narrow sense) to the economy. But of course, most things we spend money on do in fact contribute to the economy: the money goes into the pockets of the people providing the service, who go on to buy things with that money and fuel the economy. That's wha…

I'll ask you, then, to focus less on the GDP/value-add side of the argument and more on the "spiritually corrosive to individuals and society" side of the argument.

Re: ‘Routine’ Jobs Are Disappearing

#86

Post by nickff »

kefka wrote: post #75
Ensorceled wrote: post #65

There are a fair number of comments dismissing this issue with a "retrain or get left behind" and expressing not a lot of sympathy for those who don't. Remember, the average IQ in the US is just below 100[1]. Exactly what kind of jobs do you expect to retrain these people for? And how are they equipped to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps? Most of these jobs provided on the job training or apprenticeships so…

"Well, who cares if they're retrained. They're not inputting in the economy right now, and before was minimal at that. So why should we invest in do-nothings and laggards and lazy peoples? We'll give money to the people actually doing things, like CEOs and company makers." --- Is that a good attempt at this new era of pro-trump, anti-worker hatred? Edit: Seriously now? This kind of commentary is very much on-topic. B…

Please try not to put words in the mouths of your opponents; it doesn't help anyone. Address their concerns, give them a new perspective, and try to understand why they really disagree with you. Despite your intuitions, you are not a better person than all 61.9 million Trump voters (or all 63.6 million Clinton voters).

Re: ‘Routine’ Jobs Are Disappearing

#87

Post by tptacek »

metaphorm wrote: post #85
tptacek wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the "logic" I took from that comment too, but it still doesn't make any sense. We spend money on all sorts of things that don't "contribute" (in this weird, narrow sense) to the economy. But of course, most things we spend money on do in fact contribute to the economy: the money goes into the pockets of the people providing the service, who go on to buy things with that money and fuel the economy. That's wha…

I'll ask you, then, to focus less on the GDP/value-add side of the argument and more on the "spiritually corrosive to individuals and society" side of the argument.

Are you conceding the economics? (You probably should, unless I'm missing some subtlety of your argument.) That's really all I care about here.

Re: ‘Routine’ Jobs Are Disappearing

#88

Post by ben_w »

syshum wrote: post #44
toomuchtodo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Already is: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-15/world-ene... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-03/for-cheap...

That is not a complete Electrical system, just the panels which are only cheaper in area's with ideal solar output. Go north where there is less sun, and more clouds and the cost starts to rise fast, further Electrical Storage is a major concern since solar only works at most 12 hours a day, you have to something about the other 12. So no Solar is not cheaper when looked at in total cost to supply useable power to pe…

Hi, Great Britain here. Our southernmost point further north than all of the contiguous USA, and we've stopped burning coal for the first time since the 1800s this year.

Not permanently, but considering that coal was our biggest power source in 2013, that is an enormous change.

Re: ‘Routine’ Jobs Are Disappearing

#89

Post by the8472 »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #54

Welding machine operators are a drop in the bucket compared with the biggest looming job shift on the horizon: truck drivers. It's the most commonly listed job in 29 states and there are millions of them across the US. And most will be replaced by automated driving systems within the next couple decades. Yes, there will be service jobs within trucking, but that will be a small fraction of the 'routine' jobs that auto…

> truck drivers. It's the most commonly listed job in 29 states

This has been brought up previously in HN discussions. It's an artifact of arbitrary binning choices.

Re: ‘Routine’ Jobs Are Disappearing

#90

Post by tajen »

ProAm wrote: post #19
retbull wrote: post #5

It is interesting that the people who are losing jobs aren't retraining. What exactly is Trump/Republican party going to do to help with that? Bring back Coal when renewable is cheaper?

What good is a planet when you cant afford to live on it? (/s sort of)

I like your sentence, it's a philosophical study which requires an economics analysis. If we take the hypothesis that we can't afford living here because we're limited by artificial abnormalities, like the wealth being abnormally concentrated, then wouldn't the rich actually employ those people (under various forms, like purchasing more goods/houses, directly hiring servants, making use of hotels/restaurants, etc) ? It could happen that the rich are so rich that they can't consume the money they have or even invest it, but again, that would lead in a depreciation of money which would adjust it until everyone could act as if the rich people's unused stash didn't exist at all.

If we take the opposite hypothesis, which is that we can't afford living here because we're limited by actual resources, it means there are too many people on Earth. If USA were strictly equally divided, each person would have 32,000 square meters to produce wealth. While that seems enough to grow carrots for one person, it may not be enough to grow enough of them to exchange with televisions, meat, health care, education and store for retirement. The average human's footprint is higher than their share. In this case, it's not too much mechanization or automation, it's that both the rich's footprint and the poor's footprint are distortedly higher than the goods they've produced. Here you go: The money we have isn't worth what we believe, USA can only exist through the slavery of Chinese workers, and we shall see some sharp adjustment for the rich in the future. Unless they keep on distorting the economy in their favor.

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