More than outright destroying jobs, automation is changing employment in ways that will weigh on workers.<\/p>\n
The big picture: Right now, we should be less worried about robots taking human jobs than people in low-skilled positions being forced to work like robots.<\/p>\n
What's happening: In a report released late last week about the post-COVID-19 labor force, McKinsey predicted 45 million U.S. workers would be displaced by automation by the end of the decade, up from 37 million projected before the pandemic.<\/p>\n
Yes, but: McKinsey notes that despite the displacements, the total number of jobs is projected to increase. <\/p>\n
The catch: McKinsey finds that while the total number of jobs will increase, nearly all net job growth over the next decade is projected to be in high-wage occupations\" which is not good news for workers with low job skills.<\/p>\n
Zoom in: To better understand the effect of automation on employees in low-skilled jobs, Brynjolfsson and Matt Beane of the University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB) have been carrying out detailed studies of one field that has experienced tremendous employment growth recently: e-commerce warehouses.<\/p>\n
Details: Some of their early findings underscore why simply introducing robots especially in jobs that involve a lot of unpredictable, fine manual work doesn't instantly lead to wholesale job destruction.<\/p>\n
Between the lines: But what Beane and Brynjolfsson have discovered during detailed interviews with e-commerce employees and visits to warehouses is that humans themselves are already working in more automated ways. <\/p>\n
What to watch: How quickly industrial robots are developed that can handle the uncertainty and fine manual work of e-commerce warehouses as well as human laborers.<\/p>\n
The bottom line: Without better government support, U.S. employees with low job skills increasingly face a future of working like a robot if at all. <\/p>\n
Go deeper: The robo-job apocalypse is being delayed<\/p>\n
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Continue reading here:<\/p>\n
How the automation economy can turn human workers into robots - Axios<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More than outright destroying jobs, automation is changing employment in ways that will weigh on workers. The big picture: Right now, we should be less worried about robots taking human jobs than people in low-skilled positions being forced to work like robots. What's happening: In a report released late last week about the post-COVID-19 labor force, McKinsey predicted 45 million U.S Continue reading