6 ms·

Today's high schoolers are going to retire in the 2060's. Something tells me that being a truck driver isn't going to be much of a career by then.

schnevets 5y ago
I would argue a competitive salary at 18 can make the world of difference for a graduate who doesn't have the resources to attend college (as long as they were taught financial literacy by a parent or school)
Jyaif 5y ago
Totally. They really should be training older folks that have 10-20 years of work ahead, not young kids.
runako 5y ago
They've been saying the same about factory and warehouse work for several decades, and yet Amazon (who has spent over a billion $ buying robotics companies) is hiring hundreds of thousands of people in the US at higher than prevailing wages. Further -- we know that employment in a job trails off over decades, it doesn't fall off a cliff suddenly. Truck driving jobs are still increasing. I would wager that the average 18-year-old truck driver today could retire from that job when she's in her 60s.
- bluGill 5y ago
  I used to work at a factory. In 1950 there were 2000 people on the assembly line. Today there are 200. Today they make just as much as in 1950, perhaps more depending on how you measure. Sure there are still people there, but automation keeps getting better. Not too long ago 80 people lost their job when laser CNC cutters became good enough to do their job. Even where manual work is done, rechargeable tools tighten the bolts faster than a manual wrench. Things have gotten a lot safer too. Many less people have nicknames like "stubby" or "lefty" because the automatic safety stops the machine when (not if - repetitive work leads to forgetting to be safe) body parts are in the way.
  - runako 5y ago
    > In 1950 there were 2000 people on the assembly line. Today there are 200 I had a feeling this would get raised. The obvious retort is that the US has been creating tons of manufacturing jobs, but that due to changes in our trade regime, those jobs are generally created overseas. One could very easily imagine modifications to our existing trade regime that create incentives to employ Americans in factories, if such an outcome was desired. Yes, factories are more automated, but factory workers globally are still a huge and growing segment of the workforce.
    - maltalex 5y ago
      > factory workers globally are still a huge and growing segment of the workforce. Do you have a source to support this claim? It's obviously a huge workforce, but growing? Automation is happening all over the globe. I couldn't find exact numbers, but it feels like factory workers are going the way of the farmers.
      - runako 5y ago
        Here's one source: https://www.bruegel.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/RP-19-04-Uri-AbdelAziz.pdf https://www.bruegel.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/RP-19-04-... Page 12 details change in manufacturing employment 2001-2014. The US dropped 4 million manufacturing jobs over that period, but Vietnam and Indonesia each added nearly that many. Total employment in the sector increased by 56 million. That's over 4 million new jobs, annually, over the period. Even the US has been adding manufacturing jobs the last 5-10 years. 2018 saw the addition of 300k manufacturing jobs in the US: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP If there were some automation on the near horizon that could slow that job growth, there's a 5-year addressable market of $50B for the jobs added in 2018 alone. I am skeptical such automation is on the near horizon in any state where it is ready to be widely deployed. The dot-com crash overlapping with China entering the WTO slide in manufacturing employment was especially brutal. A third of US manufacturing jobs relocated in 10 years. ("Relocated" instead of "lost" because Americans are still buying those goods, and their production did not become completely automated in that timeframe.)
syshum 5y ago
Let me know when they manage to automated cross country freight trains, then we can talk about when they will have automated interstate trucks, let alone intrastate trucks (which make up probally 60% or more of the driver jobs) in 2060 there will still be a huge demand for drivers. Fully Automated driving is vaporware, even if they make the tech work which they are still decades away from, there is legal and political hurdles that will be even harder to over come.
- bluGill 5y ago
  The main reason we don't automate cross country trains seems to be unions. The technology is there. If railroads had the will it would be done. However the productivity of a train driver (pulling a long train) is high enough that it probably isn't a high priority for the railroads even though they could. Trucks are so much less productive that automation makes more sense even though it is a harder problem.
  - syshum 5y ago
    And you do not think there will be not Union, and Political issue with Automating away one of the largest employment sectors in the nation? For crying out loud we still build tanks that the military has not wanted for years because its a jobs program, and your telling me States and Federal government are just going to stand by and allow all of those primary, not to mention the thousands of secondary jobs just go poof, with no push back HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I love how people only talk about the technical problems here, the Technical problems with level 5 Freight Trucks are HUGE, and likely at least 20 years away from solved... The political problems with it however are far far far far more daunting
jimmaswell 5y ago
Operating machinery in general will surely still be a thing by then, which shouldn't be too hard to pivot to.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Sure, but one machine operator replaces between 10 and 100 people doing the same task manually. What do you do with the others?
  - jimmaswell 5y ago
    I mean forklifts, cranes, rollers, that kind of thing.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      Assembly lines can replace a lot of that. My company has several miles to move parts. Get the part off the truck (Just in time - nothing is on the truck if we don't need it that day), attach it do the line, 30 minutes later (after going all over the factory) the guys detach it and put it in the cnc laser. Then back on that line to go to the bending operations, then off to welding, then paint, then to final assembly. Parts can be on and off a dozen times in a process that takes days. We don't have a line like a traditional car factory final assembly because we need to be more flexible, but there are conveyors going all over. (interestingly final assembly is still pushed down the line by hand)
mywittyname 5y ago
Everyone should expect to change careers a few times in their life. Forty years ago was 1980. The world has changed dramatically in since then. Even if you are in ostensibly the same role in 2060 as you are today, what that role looks like is going to be completely different. Unrecognizable even.
- svachalek 5y ago
  A few things off the top of my head, as a programmer in 1980: - Quite possibly you still used punch cards to enter your programs. - Probably you had a degree in something other than computer science. Math, physics, electrical engineering, something like that. - Probably you were the only one working on whatever application or system you worked on. - Probably you didn't have any kind of internet or email access. If you needed help figuring out a problem, you went to books. - Very likely you didn't have any kind of proper source control, automated testing, or bug tracking. - Most likely you didn't have any software libraries to work with other than whatever came in your language core library. (I learned to program in 1981, but I was only 9 years old at the time, so some of this is secondhand.)
adolph 5y ago
> Something tells me that being a truck driver isn't going to be much of a career by then. Github: "You rang?" https://copilot.github.com/ https://copilot.github.com/

schnevets 5y ago

I would argue a competitive salary at 18 can make the world of difference for a graduate who doesn't have the resources to attend college (as long as they were taught financial literacy by a parent or school)

Jyaif 5y ago

Totally. They really should be training older folks that have 10-20 years of work ahead, not young kids.

runako 5y ago

They've been saying the same about factory and warehouse work for several decades, and yet Amazon (who has spent over a billion $ buying robotics companies) is hiring hundreds of thousands of people in the US at higher than prevailing wages. Further -- we know that employment in a job trails off over decades, it doesn't fall off a cliff suddenly. Truck driving jobs are still increasing. I would wager that the average 18-year-old truck driver today could retire from that job when she's in her 60s.

bluGill 5y ago
I used to work at a factory. In 1950 there were 2000 people on the assembly line. Today there are 200. Today they make just as much as in 1950, perhaps more depending on how you measure. Sure there are still people there, but automation keeps getting better. Not too long ago 80 people lost their job when laser CNC cutters became good enough to do their job. Even where manual work is done, rechargeable tools tighten the bolts faster than a manual wrench. Things have gotten a lot safer too. Many less people have nicknames like "stubby" or "lefty" because the automatic safety stops the machine when (not if - repetitive work leads to forgetting to be safe) body parts are in the way.
- runako 5y ago
  > In 1950 there were 2000 people on the assembly line. Today there are 200 I had a feeling this would get raised. The obvious retort is that the US has been creating tons of manufacturing jobs, but that due to changes in our trade regime, those jobs are generally created overseas. One could very easily imagine modifications to our existing trade regime that create incentives to employ Americans in factories, if such an outcome was desired. Yes, factories are more automated, but factory workers globally are still a huge and growing segment of the workforce.
  - maltalex 5y ago
    > factory workers globally are still a huge and growing segment of the workforce. Do you have a source to support this claim? It's obviously a huge workforce, but growing? Automation is happening all over the globe. I couldn't find exact numbers, but it feels like factory workers are going the way of the farmers.
    - runako 5y ago
      Here's one source: https://www.bruegel.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/RP-19-04-Uri-AbdelAziz.pdf https://www.bruegel.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/RP-19-04-... Page 12 details change in manufacturing employment 2001-2014. The US dropped 4 million manufacturing jobs over that period, but Vietnam and Indonesia each added nearly that many. Total employment in the sector increased by 56 million. That's over 4 million new jobs, annually, over the period. Even the US has been adding manufacturing jobs the last 5-10 years. 2018 saw the addition of 300k manufacturing jobs in the US: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP If there were some automation on the near horizon that could slow that job growth, there's a 5-year addressable market of $50B for the jobs added in 2018 alone. I am skeptical such automation is on the near horizon in any state where it is ready to be widely deployed. The dot-com crash overlapping with China entering the WTO slide in manufacturing employment was especially brutal. A third of US manufacturing jobs relocated in 10 years. ("Relocated" instead of "lost" because Americans are still buying those goods, and their production did not become completely automated in that timeframe.)

syshum 5y ago

Let me know when they manage to automated cross country freight trains, then we can talk about when they will have automated interstate trucks, let alone intrastate trucks (which make up probally 60% or more of the driver jobs) in 2060 there will still be a huge demand for drivers. Fully Automated driving is vaporware, even if they make the tech work which they are still decades away from, there is legal and political hurdles that will be even harder to over come.

bluGill 5y ago
The main reason we don't automate cross country trains seems to be unions. The technology is there. If railroads had the will it would be done. However the productivity of a train driver (pulling a long train) is high enough that it probably isn't a high priority for the railroads even though they could. Trucks are so much less productive that automation makes more sense even though it is a harder problem.
- syshum 5y ago
  And you do not think there will be not Union, and Political issue with Automating away one of the largest employment sectors in the nation? For crying out loud we still build tanks that the military has not wanted for years because its a jobs program, and your telling me States and Federal government are just going to stand by and allow all of those primary, not to mention the thousands of secondary jobs just go poof, with no push back HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I love how people only talk about the technical problems here, the Technical problems with level 5 Freight Trucks are HUGE, and likely at least 20 years away from solved... The political problems with it however are far far far far more daunting

jimmaswell 5y ago

Operating machinery in general will surely still be a thing by then, which shouldn't be too hard to pivot to.

bluGill 5y ago
Sure, but one machine operator replaces between 10 and 100 people doing the same task manually. What do you do with the others?
- jimmaswell 5y ago
  I mean forklifts, cranes, rollers, that kind of thing.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Assembly lines can replace a lot of that. My company has several miles to move parts. Get the part off the truck (Just in time - nothing is on the truck if we don't need it that day), attach it do the line, 30 minutes later (after going all over the factory) the guys detach it and put it in the cnc laser. Then back on that line to go to the bending operations, then off to welding, then paint, then to final assembly. Parts can be on and off a dozen times in a process that takes days. We don't have a line like a traditional car factory final assembly because we need to be more flexible, but there are conveyors going all over. (interestingly final assembly is still pushed down the line by hand)

mywittyname 5y ago

Everyone should expect to change careers a few times in their life. Forty years ago was 1980. The world has changed dramatically in since then. Even if you are in ostensibly the same role in 2060 as you are today, what that role looks like is going to be completely different. Unrecognizable even.

svachalek 5y ago
A few things off the top of my head, as a programmer in 1980: - Quite possibly you still used punch cards to enter your programs. - Probably you had a degree in something other than computer science. Math, physics, electrical engineering, something like that. - Probably you were the only one working on whatever application or system you worked on. - Probably you didn't have any kind of internet or email access. If you needed help figuring out a problem, you went to books. - Very likely you didn't have any kind of proper source control, automated testing, or bug tracking. - Most likely you didn't have any software libraries to work with other than whatever came in your language core library. (I learned to program in 1981, but I was only 9 years old at the time, so some of this is secondhand.)

adolph 5y ago

> Something tells me that being a truck driver isn't going to be much of a career by then. Github: "You rang?" https://copilot.github.com/ https://copilot.github.com/