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I must be missing something here. Unemployment rate right now is barely above 4% despite the significant push for automation in manufacturing, drastic downsizin

I must be missing something here. Unemployment rate right now is barely above 4% despite the significant push for automation in manufacturing, drastic downsizing in retail, accounting, movie rental, newspaper industries etc without that much global impact. What is it that's new and so threatening automation-wise that is going to have drastic effect on ppl's lives comparable to the industrial revolution?

petra 9y ago
movie rentals and newspapers are small industries, with slow change. i don't think accounting has seen large scale downsizing. As for retail, i got curious, so: "Stores are closing because of the rise of e-commerce and shifts in how people spend their money," said Deb Gabor, CEO of Sol Marketing a brand/retail strategy consultancy. "Shoppers are devoting bigger shares of their wallets to entertainment, restaurants and technology, and spending less on clothing and accessories." [1] Retail has revenue per employee of ~$450K. Restaurants have about $150K revenue per employee. So money is shifting to the more labor intensive industries, and maybe this is true even while including tech and entertainment. But this is just a small scale, relatively to what could be coming. And people's spending patterns may not be so supportive of humans. [1]http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Retail-workers-will-be-the-next-unemployment-11263625.php http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinso...
- ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
  >> movie rentals and newspapers are small industries, with slow change. Ok, fair enough. So then what are those large and fast-paced industries that are under the immediate and severe threat due to automation? I mean for something to be on par with industrial revolution there has to be a pretty profound impact all over the place, the kind of impact that the existing ways of doing things can't adapt to at all (kind of how retail has been adapting to e-commerce with mixed results over the course of the past 15+ years).
  - petra 9y ago
    Is retail adapting to e-commerce ? Or is it mostly a really slow decline ? This question is still unanswered If you look at the Amazon's recent fashion growth and walmart's grocery pick up. As for what big industries are under immediate threat ? I'm not sure about how rapid, but in almost every industry you look you see a lot of real term deep innovation(from startups) that, if successful would greatly reduce jobs. Think not only automation but electric cars and mechanics and plant based meat and farmers. That, combined with the fact that we are maybe starting to be able to mechanize the key skills of humans:dexterity and thinking, seem quite a huge change. And maybe we can adapt - but we don't hear almost any ideas at all for many more new jobs, even with creativity of the net so maybe massive unemployment is a possibility?
    - ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
      >> Is retail adapting to e-commerce ? Or is it mostly a really slow decline ? It's both, really. For some retailers with brick-and-mortar shops online presence is a way to expand their market, for others - internet is slow death. But again nothing drastic in terms of job reduction has happened overnight even though the whole "internet thing" changed the way things are done drastically af. >> And maybe we can adapt - but we don't hear almost any ideas at all for many more new jobs... It's hard to predict these things. But again I'm not buying the "zomg there will be riots" spiel. If anything there will be a whole set of new (or subset of existing) industries along the lines of how adoption of the internet-based tech spawned them.
      - petra 9y ago
        >> It's hard to predict these things [new jobs] Let's think about the Internet(in 1994) but in the abstract: It was a new medium. New mediums create new advertising and content industries around them. So did the Internet. They also create many jobs to manage/improve the technical stuff - That's also true. It's also a great distribution channel for software and goods. we've known this pretty early. and new distribution channels reduce a business cost thus increasing demand. They also create changes along the whole supply chain, so that's more work. But the surprising fact about the net is it's ability to enable businesses targeting very tiny niches. But if you talked to a many direct marketing guys back in the day, before the net and explained to them about the technical possibilities of the internet(and moore's law and powerful computing) and let them think about it, one in a 10-100, would have told you: this could be great for small targeted businesses. Or maybe that guy is working in prediction, or science fiction, etc. But today we have blogs,and media business who would kill for an eyeball, so we should be able to hear from that smart guy . So why aren't we hearing stories about all those possible new jobs ?
Chathamization 9y ago
Indeed, productivity growth (the rate of automation) is fairly low now. A lot of the big stories about automation killing jobs started popping up after the financial crisis, ignoring the actual reasons for the job loss (the financial crisis that had just devastated the global economy) in order to push a particular viewpoint. Though it was claimed that automation had permanently destroyed certain jobs and was about to destroy many more (and that the rate that this was going to happen was about dramatically), labor force participation has actually been going up since then. This is starting to remind me of peak oil, where it's become an article of faith among some people that there's a disaster right around the corner, and no amount of failed predictions or facts pointing to the contrary are going to convince them otherwise.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
throwaway2048 9y ago
Unemployment stats are deeply misleading https://qz.com/666311/why-americas-impressive-5-unemployment-rate-still-feels-like-a-lie/ https://qz.com/666311/why-americas-impressive-5-unemployment...
dredmorbius 9y ago
Both wage rates and employment stability (duration of a given employment, or even career) are significant elements of labour dynamics not captured by employment statistics, and most critically, unemployment measures.

petra 9y ago

movie rentals and newspapers are small industries, with slow change. i don't think accounting has seen large scale downsizing. As for retail, i got curious, so: "Stores are closing because of the rise of e-commerce and shifts in how people spend their money," said Deb Gabor, CEO of Sol Marketing a brand/retail strategy consultancy. "Shoppers are devoting bigger shares of their wallets to entertainment, restaurants and technology, and spending less on clothing and accessories." [1] Retail has revenue per employee of ~$450K. Restaurants have about $150K revenue per employee. So money is shifting to the more labor intensive industries, and maybe this is true even while including tech and entertainment. But this is just a small scale, relatively to what could be coming. And people's spending patterns may not be so supportive of humans. [1]http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Retail-workers-will-be-the-next-unemployment-11263625.php http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinso...

ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
>> movie rentals and newspapers are small industries, with slow change. Ok, fair enough. So then what are those large and fast-paced industries that are under the immediate and severe threat due to automation? I mean for something to be on par with industrial revolution there has to be a pretty profound impact all over the place, the kind of impact that the existing ways of doing things can't adapt to at all (kind of how retail has been adapting to e-commerce with mixed results over the course of the past 15+ years).
- petra 9y ago
  Is retail adapting to e-commerce ? Or is it mostly a really slow decline ? This question is still unanswered If you look at the Amazon's recent fashion growth and walmart's grocery pick up. As for what big industries are under immediate threat ? I'm not sure about how rapid, but in almost every industry you look you see a lot of real term deep innovation(from startups) that, if successful would greatly reduce jobs. Think not only automation but electric cars and mechanics and plant based meat and farmers. That, combined with the fact that we are maybe starting to be able to mechanize the key skills of humans:dexterity and thinking, seem quite a huge change. And maybe we can adapt - but we don't hear almost any ideas at all for many more new jobs, even with creativity of the net so maybe massive unemployment is a possibility?
  - ChemicalWarfare 9y ago
    >> Is retail adapting to e-commerce ? Or is it mostly a really slow decline ? It's both, really. For some retailers with brick-and-mortar shops online presence is a way to expand their market, for others - internet is slow death. But again nothing drastic in terms of job reduction has happened overnight even though the whole "internet thing" changed the way things are done drastically af. >> And maybe we can adapt - but we don't hear almost any ideas at all for many more new jobs... It's hard to predict these things. But again I'm not buying the "zomg there will be riots" spiel. If anything there will be a whole set of new (or subset of existing) industries along the lines of how adoption of the internet-based tech spawned them.
    - petra 9y ago
      >> It's hard to predict these things [new jobs] Let's think about the Internet(in 1994) but in the abstract: It was a new medium. New mediums create new advertising and content industries around them. So did the Internet. They also create many jobs to manage/improve the technical stuff - That's also true. It's also a great distribution channel for software and goods. we've known this pretty early. and new distribution channels reduce a business cost thus increasing demand. They also create changes along the whole supply chain, so that's more work. But the surprising fact about the net is it's ability to enable businesses targeting very tiny niches. But if you talked to a many direct marketing guys back in the day, before the net and explained to them about the technical possibilities of the internet(and moore's law and powerful computing) and let them think about it, one in a 10-100, would have told you: this could be great for small targeted businesses. Or maybe that guy is working in prediction, or science fiction, etc. But today we have blogs,and media business who would kill for an eyeball, so we should be able to hear from that smart guy . So why aren't we hearing stories about all those possible new jobs ?

Chathamization 9y ago

Indeed, productivity growth (the rate of automation) is fairly low now. A lot of the big stories about automation killing jobs started popping up after the financial crisis, ignoring the actual reasons for the job loss (the financial crisis that had just devastated the global economy) in order to push a particular viewpoint. Though it was claimed that automation had permanently destroyed certain jobs and was about to destroy many more (and that the rate that this was going to happen was about dramatically), labor force participation has actually been going up since then. This is starting to remind me of peak oil, where it's become an article of faith among some people that there's a disaster right around the corner, and no amount of failed predictions or facts pointing to the contrary are going to convince them otherwise.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

throwaway2048 9y ago

Unemployment stats are deeply misleading https://qz.com/666311/why-americas-impressive-5-unemployment-rate-still-feels-like-a-lie/ https://qz.com/666311/why-americas-impressive-5-unemployment...

dredmorbius 9y ago

Both wage rates and employment stability (duration of a given employment, or even career) are significant elements of labour dynamics not captured by employment statistics, and most critically, unemployment measures.