Normally, I wouldn’t post about the climate of the nation, but I feel it is important to discuss jobs. Personally, my career has me working in a technology space that works on analytics. We collect and display data for our customers, and this allows our customers the ability to make decisions based on in depth information. However, it also allows them to be more productive with less. As such, there is a logical conclusion that can be made: producing more with less will mean you need less workers. Which brings me to my main point, many positions in this country (the ones that are growing) are for highly educated individuals, and those positions, are working aggressively to automate systems.
Every business begins with a basic idea, and that business, if it catches on, will need to continue to grow and evolve their core product. This is the root of capitalism, you grow and produce more profits. This leads to innovation. However, with the core being growth, a business is not focused on the impact to the surrounding systems around them (environment, population, and the entire ecology of our world) – some business do actively try to review what they are doing to the surrounding world before making a decision. (click [Read More] for the rest of this diatribe)
Now, I will focus on a singular form of technology: autonomy. For many, the concept of self-driving cars has been science fiction. However, in recent years the concept of a self-driving car has become a reality as multiple companies demo and test these vehicles. What’s interesting, to me, is that Volvo had this technology years ago – and in fact – many major companies have been working on it for ten-plus years. The reason is simple, if I can sell you a more expensive vehicle, with the promise of cutting down your fixed cost of having a driver, then you would obviously invest the initial capital in my vehicle and I would receive the money that would have gone to the driver in a single lump sum for my corporation.
There is no way to stop this evolution for vehicles to become autonomous. They are actively safer, are more efficient in terms of fuel, and allow consumers to relax on the road. Furthermore, it would drive down the price of goods across all of America – from your Amazon purchases to getting a ride to and from the bar. Yet, they will also put millions of Americans out of work.
There are currently 3.0 to 3.5 million truck drivers in America. As fleets migrate to autonomous semi-trucks, only the specialized drivers will continue to work – think drivers on the ice roads in Canada (they will still have jobs because paying a programmer for a niche job function would cost more getting into that market). Now, these were well paying jobs that supported many families throughout the country. It won’t happen overnight, but these jobs will disappear. Unfortunately, and I hate to categorize the jobs as such, these careers involve unskilled labor. You have to take a class, get certified, and you will gain experience, but most people in the country could do those things and begin hauling goods from one side of the country to another. Which begs the question, where will these people go to get work? Do they know how to program in C++, C, Python, C#, or any other language? If not, then the jobs we are creating won’t benefit them.
This logical conclusion will also impact another part of the market: taxi drivers. This is a much smaller number, not even a million, but they will also be impacted. Before Uber, there was a projection that the number of drivers would increase. However, with Uber already impacting those workers with their fleet of “independent contractors” (Uber doesn’t count its drivers as part of their corporation so they are not beholden to normal employment laws) you can imagine what will happen once they have a fleet of autonomous vehicles. Furthermore, any major car manufacturer will be willing to work with Uber as it will increase the sale of their vehicles and they will gain precious intellectual property (IP) for their own fleet of autonomous vehicles.
While these positions will create jobs, the amount of jobs they will affect is far greater. Right now, we are seeing an increase in positions across the country, but once those workers succeed in autonomy (for reference, they already have), the increase in unemployed workers will begin to climb steadily. Perhaps, there will be an increase in unskilled labor in factories to produce these machines, but I doubt it will be much and autonomous robots will probably fill most of the new roles.
So… if anyone talks about bringing back jobs, they can’t. In ten years, the United States of America will experience an unprecedented decline in work for unskilled labor.