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Yeah, no joke, truck drivers are currently the most common job in over half of the states.[0] Eventually we're going to get a lot of professional video gamers.

Yeah, no joke, truck drivers are currently the most common job in over half of the states.[0] Eventually we're going to get a lot of professional video gamers.[1] My biggest hope is that we get something like FoldIt to take off, and the collective unemployed on UBI playing video games all day end up curing cancer in their spare time.[2] [0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t... [1] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dVz9Ks8SSsYJ:www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/what-are-young-non-working-men-doing/492890/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:dVz9Ks8... [2] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110918144955.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110918144955.h...

randomdata 10y ago
> truck drivers are currently the most common job in over half of the states. But not really[0] [0] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-truck-driver-isnt-the-most-common-job-in-your-state-2015-02-12 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-truck-driver-isnt-the-mo...
- tyingq 10y ago
  That story is a little flawed as well. They first compare 2.8 million truck drivers (a specific job) to large categories like "food services". Then, they do get specific, and show specific jobs, like cashier (3.3 million) at the top of the list...which only serves to confirm that "truck driver" is one of the largest. Whenever self-driving trucks do get here, it will affect more than the ~3 million truck drivers. Other trucking occupations like dispatch, then related businesses, like truck stops and motels are obvious big hits. I assume there's lots of smaller ones as well...things like CB radios, custom mud flaps, trucker talk radio, porn on DVD and so on.
  - randomdata 10y ago
    > That story is a little flawed as well. They first compare 2.8 million truck drivers (a specific job) to large categories like "food services". I'm not sure it was really a flaw. That was the entire point of the article. The complaint was about how the NPR (and the BLS by extension) lumped anything that had a tiny resemblance to a truck driver into one category, but broke up other industries into smaller groups, such as the 80 different categories teachers can be found in. When they applied those broad strokes to other industries, truck driver didn't look so big anymore. Truck driver represents about 1-2% of the workforce. About the same size as the farmer population. Strangely, nobody is worried about self-driving tractors – which are further along than their road-travelling brethren – taking away farmer jobs, despite a similar impact in numbers. > Whenever self-driving trucks do get here If is the bigger question. As many of us around here are engineers, we know it's easy to get a 90% solution and it's easy to demo a 90% solution to get people excited about what you are working on. But the last 10% required to actually put these things on the market can take forever. Lots of outstanding problems that we still have absolutely no idea how to solve. Past performance is not an indication of future results.
    - tyingq 10y ago
      >If is the bigger question. Personally, I think it's closer than self-driving cars. I suspect they can take over the interstate routes fairly quickly just by using some roadside land as "ports" to transfer control to human drivers. That would get the vast majority of the miles automated without tackling the harder, non-interstate, parts.
      - randomdata 10y ago
        But even then, long haul truckers only make up about half of the truck driving sector, so not only will the other half still be necessary as always, there will be additional need for short-haul drivers to handle the loads coming in off interstate routes that they were previously handled by the long-haul driver end-to-end. Additionally, the industry has been quite vocal about wanting to have more trucks on long-haul trips, but cannot afford the talent. If those costs come down, there will be even more trucks on the road, needing even more short-haul truckers. So, while the may be some decline in the job numbers for that industry, it doesn't seem that impactful.

randomdata 10y ago

> truck drivers are currently the most common job in over half of the states. But not really[0] [0] http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-truck-driver-isnt-the-most-common-job-in-your-state-2015-02-12 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/no-truck-driver-isnt-the-mo...

tyingq 10y ago
That story is a little flawed as well. They first compare 2.8 million truck drivers (a specific job) to large categories like "food services". Then, they do get specific, and show specific jobs, like cashier (3.3 million) at the top of the list...which only serves to confirm that "truck driver" is one of the largest. Whenever self-driving trucks do get here, it will affect more than the ~3 million truck drivers. Other trucking occupations like dispatch, then related businesses, like truck stops and motels are obvious big hits. I assume there's lots of smaller ones as well...things like CB radios, custom mud flaps, trucker talk radio, porn on DVD and so on.
- randomdata 10y ago
  > That story is a little flawed as well. They first compare 2.8 million truck drivers (a specific job) to large categories like "food services". I'm not sure it was really a flaw. That was the entire point of the article. The complaint was about how the NPR (and the BLS by extension) lumped anything that had a tiny resemblance to a truck driver into one category, but broke up other industries into smaller groups, such as the 80 different categories teachers can be found in. When they applied those broad strokes to other industries, truck driver didn't look so big anymore. Truck driver represents about 1-2% of the workforce. About the same size as the farmer population. Strangely, nobody is worried about self-driving tractors – which are further along than their road-travelling brethren – taking away farmer jobs, despite a similar impact in numbers. > Whenever self-driving trucks do get here If is the bigger question. As many of us around here are engineers, we know it's easy to get a 90% solution and it's easy to demo a 90% solution to get people excited about what you are working on. But the last 10% required to actually put these things on the market can take forever. Lots of outstanding problems that we still have absolutely no idea how to solve. Past performance is not an indication of future results.
  - tyingq 10y ago
    >If is the bigger question. Personally, I think it's closer than self-driving cars. I suspect they can take over the interstate routes fairly quickly just by using some roadside land as "ports" to transfer control to human drivers. That would get the vast majority of the miles automated without tackling the harder, non-interstate, parts.
    - randomdata 10y ago
      But even then, long haul truckers only make up about half of the truck driving sector, so not only will the other half still be necessary as always, there will be additional need for short-haul drivers to handle the loads coming in off interstate routes that they were previously handled by the long-haul driver end-to-end. Additionally, the industry has been quite vocal about wanting to have more trucks on long-haul trips, but cannot afford the talent. If those costs come down, there will be even more trucks on the road, needing even more short-haul truckers. So, while the may be some decline in the job numbers for that industry, it doesn't seem that impactful.