Investigating How Technology Affects Employment
Since the Luddites destroyed machine looms out of concern about their jobs, technology’s impact on employment has been a heated issue. New technologies undoubtedly create new occupations, such as computer programming and solar panel installation, even as they can also remove some. Still up for debate is whether technology creates more jobs than it replaces. While measuring this has been challenging up until now, new study by MIT economist David Autor offers some insights by examining U.S. employment patterns since 1940.
Principal Findings of the Study
The study, which forms part of an MIT News two-part series, looks at how to balance the number of jobs lost to automation with those gained by technology “augmentation,” which adds additional responsibilities. As to the report, technology has been displacing more American employment than it has created, especially after 1980.
Co-author of a report describing these results Autor adds, “There does appear to be a faster rate of automation and a slower rate of augmentation in the last four decades compared to the four decades prior.”
Innovations in Analysis
The researchers examined U.S. patents during the past century and 35,000 job categories from U.S. Census data to create a novel approach to researching this problem. This made it possible for them to measure for the first time how technology affects job creation as well as loss.
Autor compares himself to a paleontologist who discovered dinosaur bones that we had assumed existed but had not been able to locate up until now. “This study breaks ground on things we suspected but did not have direct proof of before.”
Principal Results: Augmentation vs. Automation
About 60% of the jobs in the United States today, according to the report, are new jobs invented since 1940. For instance, a century ago a computer programmer would have probably worked as a farmhand. Autor and his group examined patent texts using natural language processing tools to follow the evolution of job categories and find connections between new technology and job effects.
“Automation is a machine that takes the inputs for a job and does it for the worker,” Autor says. “We consider augmentation as technology that expands human capabilities in terms of productivity, quality of work, or variety of tasks.”
New positions including shipping clerks, department managers, and engineers appeared between 1940 and 1980 when mechanized jobs like elevator operators and typesetters were replaced. But between 1980 and 2018, occupations for industrial engineers and systems analysts increased while those for cabinetmakers and machinists fell.
The Changing Scenery
According to the study, between 1980 and 2018 the detrimental effects of automation on employment were more than twice as great as they had been during the previous 40 years. Over this time, augmentation produced some new jobs, but not enough to make up for the automation losses.
“We’ve always produced new work, but there’s no law that says these things have to be balanced,” notes Autor.
The Part AI Plays
The report also makes clear that augmentation and automation frequently occur in the same sectors. An industrial company might, for instance, employ more systems analysts than machinists. With highly educated professionals more likely to work in new industries that offer both high-paying and lower-income occupations, technological advancements over the past 40 years have exacerbated the wage gap in the United States.
Autor describes the split nature of the new work. “New work has grown on either side as old work has been erased in the middle.”
Not only is technology a factor in innovative work. Changes in the demographics support the expansion of the service sectors. Fascinatingly, broad consumer demand can encourage technical innovation, as new products are frequently created in response to obvious social demands.
Forward View
The report also makes the difficult point that it is to forecast how technology will develop and how it will affect jobs. For example, it is yet unclear how AI will be used in the workplace. While augmenting decisions, AI may replace some high-skill knowledge. Autor makes a comparison to the creation of GPS, which was developed for military use but took decades to find its way into smartphones.
AI is very different, claims Autor. The purpose of this new instrument is currently unknown to us. It takes some time to realize the advantages and disadvantages of new technologies.
Final Thought
Autor feels that the new study techniques offer a basis for next investigations on how technology affects employment. The crucial realization is the capacity to measure how technology both enhances and replaces jobs.
“Documenting and measuring the extent to which technology enhances people’s jobs was the missing link,” Autor adds. We were astounded that we could recognize, categorize, and measure augmentation. That alone seems to me to be really fundamental.
Several groups supported this research, including Google, The Carnegie Corporation, and the MIT Work of the Future Task Force. The results create fresh paths for comprehending the intricate interaction between work and technology.