I’m a skeptic. I’ll admit that data and stats don’t always tell the full story, but they can offer a few solid points of understanding to begin a discussion with. If we don’t turn to the facts about how automation has already affected the business world across the past four decades, we’re stuck at a “they said, we said” impasse. And boy, are the facts depressing.
Case Study: The Oil and Gas Industry
Here’s the chart that points out the problem with automation in our bottom-line-driven society.
In just two and a half years, the oil and gas industry constricted, invested in automation, and rebounded. The business is doing great. The volume of employees, however, remains down. Their jobs aren’t more fun, they just don’t exist anymore. That chart, and a few more like it, is available in a comprehensive exploration of automation’s effects on the workforce from advocate Scott Santens on Medium. The fact that businesses are doing better than ever explains why CEOs are so positive about the effects of automation, but just being on the right side of rapidly increasing income inequality doesn’t solve the growing problem.
The Upshot: Unemployment
As automation increases, businesses are making more money, and those profits all flow upwards to the business owners and executives in charge. But don’t listen to me: Check out the data. A 2017 MIT study has analyzed the impact of industrial robots from 1990 to 2007, finding that they indeed reduce jobs. The future isn’t slowing down automation: The industrial robot workforce is estimated to quadruple by 2025. And plenty of seemly awesome inventions will crater their respective industries, too. The impact that self-driving cars will have on employment in the trucking industry — one of the largest economy drivers in numerous U.S. states — is pretty obvious. Net job creation is going down as automation goes up. Which makes sense. After all, a business is designed to see workers as an expense, and the point of automation is to cut down on expenses. Anyone who disagrees should just take a look at the data.
