Post
Topic
Board Economics
Re: Technological unemployment is (almost) here
by
Rassah
on 08/12/2013, 17:39:01 UTC
All global statistics support my point of view. Since last 30 years or so ( depending on the country ).

Global
Real wages down
Labor participation rate down
Labor income share in GDP down. ( This was an iron division between labor share and capital share that was stable for centuries until computers arrived )
Amount of people working in private businesses down ( trend of last 10 years ). Many people hired in administration ( hidden unemployment )
More people working part time , less people working full time. ( scewing statistics of true unemployment , in many countries someone working 8 hours a week is not counted as unemployed )
Record low investments into new employees , record high investments into equipment.

Hmm, don't know where you got your statistics from, but these say otherwise. It's a chart of total global labor force, employment, and unemployment from 1948 to present



Note that technology has been booming, jobs have been getting replaced, population has been increasing, and yet unemployment has remained fairly constant. So, jobs replaced by technology were apparently being replaced by new jobs.

Sure, if you just look at your country, labor participation may be down, businesses are shutting down and leaving, people are going to work at fast food and other part time jobs because all good jobs moved away. This got especially worse since 2008, when economies of your and other major countries somewhat crashed, and tons of new regulations were put in place. However, if you look at the rest of the world, that's where all those closing businesses and jobs moved to. So in there view, they went from crappy jobs such as subsistence farming,  prostitution, dusty literal sweatshops, and more recently phone support, to the kinds of things you are complaining about having to do now, which in their view is infinitely better.

Technology didn't just arrive and start taking away jobs in mid 2000. And yours is not the only country in the world.