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Reducing employment by 10% would be catastrophic for the US economy and will cause massive social unrest, not to mention the effects in developing countries whe

Reducing employment by 10% would be catastrophic for the US economy and will cause massive social unrest, not to mention the effects in developing countries where people who have just been pulled out of abject poverty in the last generation will suddenly see those opportunities disappear again. Now remember truck drivers are the most populous single occupation in the US, and commercial trucking is expected to be largely automated within 20-30 years by most major shipping companies. We don't need an science fiction style singularity to destroy our world, just a couple of small changes in the fringes will be enough.

the8472 9y ago
> Now remember truck drivers are the most populous single occupation in the US Based on non-uniform binning criteria. Bin differently and other jobs might be on the top. Although they might be just as susceptible to automation. It's a nice example, but it is about as solid as pluto's planetary status.
- mdorazio 9y ago
  If you're interested in non-binned numbers, Business Insider summarized the BLS data [1] a couple years ago. Nationally, the most common occupations are retail and food service workers. You could argue that Amazon is going to put some significant portion of those out of work in the next 20 years. Note that truck drivers are not in the top 10 chart even though the American Trucking Association estimates 3.5 million truck drivers in the US since BLS puts the number at about 1.7 million. I don't know where the discrepancy comes from. [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-jobs-in-america-2014-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-jobs-in-america-...