| My concern isn't that there will be widespread unemployment, it's more that there will be a higher barrier of entry to the labor market and/or high skill workers will displace low skill workers. Let's say that 20% of entry level or unskilled labor jobs are replaced by automation, but an equal amount of skilled labor or knowledge oriented jobs are created. Basically, jobs that require training or experience. Well, training and experience aren't free. You can't just show up and start welding things. There's apprenticeships or union schools or maybe you're lucky enough know someone with a welding kit, but you need to learn how to weld first. It's not entirely one of those artificial market barriers. Bad welds can create structural integrity issues and can be difficult to fix so they've got to be done right the first time. It's skilled labor, and skills take time to acquire. These newly created jobs require some kind of capital to access. Could be just money to pay for education, or could be social capital of knowing the right people, or time spent learning the skill, but you're not gonna show up for the job. There's plenty of reasons why someone would have trouble finding that capital. Maybe they work to help support the family and don't have the time for education. There could be any number of reasons though that getting new skills is difficult, and there's no mail room for you to start in and work your way up to management. What happens when you can't afford bootstraps? Also, as industries change or new industries are created, this can make it harder to transition to other industries if your skills don't transfer. You better have some savings or safety net while you retrain for a new industry if yours is collapsing.
So, while I'm not sold that we'll have widespread unemployment, but I think it's more likely that social mobility takes a hit and the inequality gap widens. There's some evidence that this is already happening and while more people are graduating the number of jobs requiring those degrees isn't increasing as fast, so higher skilled workers are pushing lower skilled workers down the ladder. Not to mention that things are changing faster and faster (that exponential innovation curve), so changes that could wait for a new generation will need to be addressed sooner. http://www.nber.org/papers/w18901.pdf |