
Technology has created more jobs than it has destroyed, says 140 years of data - edward
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/17/technology-created-more-jobs-than-destroyed-140-years-data-census
======
adrianN
Even if you accept that the trend of more jobs being created by technology
than are being destroyed will continue indefinitely, fretting over technology
replacing you if you're taxi driver is very justified. Having to learn a
completely new trade is not easy.

~~~
alwaysdoit
Society as a whole benefits, but there are high individual costs. We ought to
figure out a way to smooth out those costs for the individuals.

~~~
collyw
I am not sure it always does.

Do you view the NSA's snooping technology as a benefit to society? More high
tech, well paid jobs have been created there.

Likewise I feel that a great deal of the tech involved in finance is of
questionable benefit to society as aw whole. Does High frequency trading
actually benefit anyone other than the banks?

~~~
adrianN
I'm no financial expert, but I believe HFT benefits many people by making the
difference between buy-price and sell-price smaller and increasing the
liquidity of the market.

~~~
collyw
The banks seem to be the only ones benefiting from this as far as I can tell.
My life doesn't feel any better for HFT.

~~~
gd1
Look around you. Pick any product you like. A thousand financial transactions
went into making it, all along the supply chain. Currencies were converted and
hedged, iron ore and copper and crude oil futures were purchased and sold.
When technology squeezes out middlemen and makes them more efficient, you
gain.

~~~
edc117
I could be wrong, but from what I understand of HFT, it doesn't squeeze out
middlemen, it squeezes out competition. It sets the barrier to entry so high
that only the super rich can participate. I agree completely with your point,
by the way, I'm just not sure HFT is a good example of it.

------
dotcoma
If true, is this good?

Isn't the purpose of work to end (or to diminish, at least) all work? (and
leave us with more time to take care of ourselves, our minds, our bodies, our
souls, our kids, our parents, our friends, our neighbours, our politics, our
environment etc)

~~~
simonh
The trap I find myself in is that (at least here in the UK) we are all in
competition with each other for a fixed, limited resource. Housing. I earn a
very good wage, as does my wife, but we still work tough jobs for long hours
so that we can afford a nice house, in a good location, with a garden for our
kids to grow up in. No matter how much people like me earn, we will just use
it to bid up house prices even more. Everyone blames the government or the
banks, etc for house prices and how hard we have to work to afford a nice
place. The truth is we're doing it to ourselves and each other.

~~~
toyg
That's a cultural construct, not an economic one. In a lot of other countries,
it's perfectly acceptable to rent or live in flats, or around cities that are
not the capital; but in England, these conditions carry a huge social stigma,
which is compounded by deeply-entrenched classism. It's a perfect storm,
really; but yeah, you're doing it to yourself. Move to Manchester ;)

~~~
redcalx
> That's a cultural construct

The rental versus buying dichotomy is orthogonal to the issue of limited
supply. If everyone rents there is still the same overall demand for
accommodation, hence rents would be high (due to limited supply) and that
would propagate through to push up property prices. End result is the same.

~~~
bwohlergo
that was _one_ example he gave, you've not diminished his point in any way by
questioning only a part of his argument.

------
danielbarla
I have no real doubt this is true, but what _may_ be different in today's
situation is that something akin to true "artificial general intelligence" is
not completely unfeasible (or something close enough to it that there's no
practical difference). This is quite different to previous technological
revolutions, where it was primarily manual labour that was automated. We seem
to have in general conceded that many of those types of tasks can be better
done by machines (with the exception of our adaptable intelligence, but how
long will that be unique to us?).

Now, people who are displaced by technology can move on to other things, but
what happens if there really is nothing we're better at than a computer, in
say 100 years?

~~~
no_gravity

        what happens if there really is nothing
        we're better at than a computer
    

It's not that you have to compete with computers while being naked and without
tools in outer space.

The line between Humans and Computers will continue to blur. Right now, you
carry a computer with you in your pocket. Tomorrow you will have it in your
head. And it will aid your thinking without you having to type stuff into a
keyboard and looking at a screen.

If there is nothing left "we" are better at then computers, the last remaining
"old" parts inside of us will be discarded and we will just be a computer like
everybody else :)

~~~
aruggirello
> Right now, you carry a computer with you in your pocket. Tomorrow you will
> have it in your head. And it will aid your thinking without you having to
> type stuff into a keyboard and looking at a screen.

You're assuming people will want it in their heads. I'd rather be naked and
without tools, than become part of The Borg. YMMV though.

~~~
no_gravity
That reminds me of the time when mobile phones were new and some people told
me "You will _never_ see me walking around with a mobile phone. When I'm
alone, I want to be alone! And not being reachable and connected all the
time.".

They all have mobiles now.

------
minthd
Looking at current uk employment numbers[1] , it seems that healthcare ,
education accommodation and food services count as 23% of the economy.

But :

1\. Will they grow under new conditions ?

These sectors historically didn't enjoy more productivity due to technology.
Economists called this "baumol's disease". But this is changing. We're seeing
higher education and maybe some lower education being automated. In japan we
saw a robotic hotel, there's plenty of efforts to automate the food
industry(both making and serving food), and in healthcare we're on the way to
become much more effective at a fast rate with many(hundreds of genetic
treatments in clinical trials,great improvements in targeted cancer therapies,
artificial pancreases and continuous glucose monitoring are on the way to
solve diabetes , etc ,etc) .

2\. How much more can they grow ? Will said growth be enough to stop job
decline in other sectors ?

All those sectors grew due to stuff like cheap credit, degree inflation, more
expandable income, growing country budgets, etc.

But will those conditions continue to be true in a world with a lot of
unemployment in other sectors - much more than we saw in the past ?

Also - all those three sectors are 23% of the economy. We're talking about 40%
of jobs at risk due to automation in 20 years. So those sectors would have to
double/triple themselves to compensate. Is this realistic ?

[1][http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/bus-register/business-
register...](http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/bus-register/business-register-
employment-survey/2013-provisional/rft-table-1.xls)

~~~
toyg
_> 1\. Will they grow under new conditions ?_

Some conditions don't change. An OAP with limited mobility will always require
assistance day-to-day, and it's the sort of thing robots are really bad at.
OAPs are also growing in number, as life expectation increases. Another one:
you will always need someone to help give birth - in fact, as hospitals are
deemed too expensive and scaled back, we will likely need more nurses, since
home-births stop them from sharing their time between patients. Again, this
will not be touched by automation. I'm sure there are plenty of other
examples.

 _> 2\. How much more can they grow ?_

I think that's more a function of our social organisation than technology. The
real question is basically "how can we pay these people?" \-- morality and
common sense tell us that a lot of these activities should not be linked to
profit, but that is economically challenging unless we rethink how money is
created and distributed.

 _> We're talking about 40% of jobs at risk due to automation in 20 years._

I find that number too high to be true. 10 or 20%, maybe; 40%, it's really
hard to believe - that's 15 million people in the UK without a job, where
currently we have 2.3million unemployed. It would mean basically 1 million
newly unemployed people each year; I would argue society would not survive 5
years in such conditions, let alone 20.

In any case, I have no doubt we can create more office-based bullshit roles to
offset the bulk of those losses (dedicated entertainment people in every
office; corporate psychologists; continuous-change oversight; dedicated
corporate tailors; and so on and so forth...).

~~~
minthd
>> I find that number too high to be true. 10 or 20%, maybe; 40%

The 40% came from a study at oxford, which i think was a bit conservative ,
because it didn't take into account the possibility of creative jobs being
automated.

>> I have no doubt we can create more office-based bullshit roles

Sure we can. But will we ? i'm not so sure.

>> but that is economically challenging unless we rethink how money is created
and distributed.

If that happens , a lot of things would change, for both directions - more
jobs and less jobs.

>> Again, this will not be touched by automation.

Automation is the less powerful technology working on healthcare. But if you
can detect diseases very early , and have very effective , side-effect free
and long-term treatments , healthcare will become more efficient.

Or let's talk about limited mobility(your example) - a leading cause is severe
arthritis. But maybe we can cure that ?

>> home-births

Maybe we'll see growth there.But i would guess it's not that big of job
provider. and even for home births, there's telemedicine and remote continuous
monitoring , i think in use today - saving work.

------
tim333
I'm not sure the number of jobs is that related to the amount of work needing
to be done. It's more people like doing something and so will tend to do so.
Otherwise as the number of people employed in agriculture dropped from like
70% to 2% over a couple of centuries it would of led to 68% sitting about. But
instead they invent new things to do - say interior design or computer game
design. Whether the person designing interiors counts as having a job or a
hobby is down to whether people exchange money for the service which they tend
to do in a way that is not terribly effected by what technology is involved.

It will be interesting to see how it plays out when robots get smart. My guess
is people will still work on their novels, designing stuff, acting and the
like.

~~~
pliny
>It's more people like doing something and so will tend to do so

You're putting the cart before the horse (or I misunderstood you).

People have less they are required to do and use time they would have spent
tending to their farm to ensure their survival, to pursue novelty and comfort
instead.

But people aren't great at entertaining themselves, so a lot of people are
employed in the business of entertaining others.

Comfort is also something that doesn't come easily, so a lot of people are
employed in the business of doing menial tasks (like cooking and cleaning) for
others, or producing furniture or machines that enhance our comfort.

~~~
asgard1024
> People have less they are required to do and use time they would have spent
> tending to their farm to ensure their survival, to pursue novelty and
> comfort instead.

Are you sure? Maybe what they are actually pursuing is trying to convince
other people that some new job is sorely needed in the "new economy"?

~~~
pliny
Dereference 'they' for me.

*People in what you quoted was intended to mean "anybody who would have been a farmer", so that's the 68% that have to find alternative employment.

I live in an apartment building, my rooms have air conditioning units, and I
have a bed and a sofa and a refrigerator and lots of other things that improve
my quality of life, and people had to build all of those things (including the
building I live in and the rooms in the building and the power plant that runs
all the stuff in my apartment and the buses and trains I use to get to places
and the roads and track those drive on etc.), the labor and ingenuity required
for all those things to exist comes from (I think) that 68%+ of people who
were unemployed by technology, and those people also have their own things
(homes and food and furniture and transportation), which they use to entertain
themselves or make themselves more comfortable.

~~~
asgard1024
There are some sources that claim that medieval peasants in agricultural
economy worked around 6 hours a day, and it was less than is standard today in
the developed world.

Seeking leisure is a human nature, true. But maybe also human nature is to
compete for resources, get more for your family, and make yourself more
attractive to the other sex, even if that means working harder. If the
alternative is unemployment, this may drive people to work in (or even create)
services that they know are not really that useful.

------
prodmerc
Uh, yeah, because there was room to grow or move in to. In 1900 people were
still settling in America, and production has grown immensely worldwide at a
steady rate since then, while population was relatively low.

Now, population has grown three fold in the last hundred years:
[http://www.historyfuturenow.com/wp/wp-
content/uploads/2012/1...](http://www.historyfuturenow.com/wp/wp-
content/uploads/2012/11/populationgrowthhistory2.jpg)

There are more old people alive than ever before as a percentage of the
overall population (I guess there's jobs in caring for them, unless robots do
that, as well), and technology is at a point where it can replace humans
completely, instead of working side by side.

I always say, the Industrial Revolution = _humans aided by machines_ (say a
ratio of 1-100), the Automation Revolution = _machines aided by humans_ (take
the same ratio in reverse).

You see the problem? Population is exploding, job automation is doing the
same. In a society that needs to work in order to live, that is unsustainable.

I'm all for automation, but we need something for those who will simply have
nothing to do in order to make money...

The people who own and maintain the machines will be fine, those who mediate
relations between humans-humans-machines, as well. What about the rest?

~~~
toyg
_> Uh, yeah, because there was room to grow or move in to._

There is still plenty of room to grow and improve. Africa and Asia have huge
amounts of land that are nowhere as dense as the US, let alone Europe.

 _> we need something for those who will simply have nothing to do in order to
make money..._

We need to rethink how money is created and distributed. Once you do that, the
need to "make money" might be lessened or replaced with different ones.

~~~
pixl97
>There is still plenty of room to grow and improve. Africa and Asia have huge
amounts of land that are nowhere as dense as the US, let alone Europe.

You might want to re-think that. Places where people do not live are generally
like that for a reason. How much fresh water is there? Do we really want to
have more places on the planet under water stress? Do we want to ship water
there? Is it hot as hell there? How much of a persons income is needed to
survive with modern conveniences? What is the carbon cost of living there?

>We need to rethink how money is created and distributed.

That has to happen, but will it happen? For example, after the horse was
replaced by the car, did we keep millions of horses around? No, there numbers
dropped significantly. If technology can truly replace huge numbers of people,
the people left with the capital may think that getting rid of huge portions
of the population is a valid outcome. The truly scary thing is it may actually
be a valid answer.

------
x5n1
What this is actually showing is that wages continued to increase and the
discretionary income that people had went back in the economy and the people
found things to do that they could charge money for. So yes as long as there
is money, people will find things to offer other people. That has not much to
do with technology but more with the circulation of money.

------
gutnor
Not quite sure the article is making any point about technology that was not
widely accepted before. Industrialization with its the social progresses, and
the golden age post-WW2 are always taken as counterpoint in any discussion
about impact of technology today, as is the article conclusion "where one
avenue closes in the jobs market, others open.".

The actual problem that worries people nowadays is if there is a limit to the
number of avenues and if we are close to hitting it ? And even if new avenues
open, how easy it is to switch to them physically ( they open in another
country ) or practically ( they require high qualification level ) The article
does not make a case for that at all. Increase in caring professions, for
example, is government policy driven. Is the article claiming that technology
what the key factor that drove those policies and that further automation will
drive the state to push for even more caring professionals ?

Anyway, I guess the only goal of the article is to give hope to Joe Reader.
That is not a bad thing, after all, at the very worst, we are still only at
the peak of employment and wealth and (without the singularity) the world will
not brutally crash, it will slowly degrade leaving plenty of opportunities for
everyone to get a clue. For others though, they would have guessed that with a
population doubling during the same period and low current unemployment rate,
it is obvious that some jobs must have been created somewhere.

~~~
tim333
>the world will not brutally crash, it will slowly degrade

I think if you look at the stats it's been slowly upgrading rather than visa
versa. I don't see much sign of the trend reversing globally. Pessimists tend
to look at worker living standards in the US where they have been kind of
static, ignoring the poorest 80% of the planet where they have been shooting
up. China for example has been transformed over the last 30 years.

------
dunkelheit
I am more interested in another question: has technology created more leisure
than it has destroyed?

~~~
mavdi
I guess it that depends from person to person but I'd be definitely interested
to see the general population happiness (not sure how they measure that) with
tech.

I personally can't stand tech anymore, it's what I'm forced to do to make a
living. I'd rather stare at a tree than a mobile screen.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I think it's a good idea not to be too Western. Median living standards in the
West have improved a lot over the last century, especially since WWII.

But a lot of that improvement has been off the back of Rest of World, where
slave-like conditions still endure. It's fine to have hairdressers here, but
it's useful to remember that hairdressing is only possible because there are
textile makers, miners, and farmers working in extremely harsh conditions
elsewhere in the world.

And there's also been incredible damage to the planetary carrying capacity,
with effects that will become more and more obvious as the century progresses.

So it's just as possible to argue that technology is more like a drug that
works on generational time scales: you get a hit, you feel _awesome_ for a
while, then you fall apart.

~~~
mavdi
Agreed. It well may be that technology temporarily enhances our lives while in
the long run it's detrimental for our species.

------
bryans
I think this article completely misses the point. The technological revolution
happening right now is unlike any other in history, and is escalating faster
than anyone realizes. We are really just entering the ascent of the S-curve,
and things are already starting to advance dramatically on a yearly basis.
Comparing the effects of technology between today and even 40 years ago (much
less a century ago) is the epitome of apples-to-oranges. It is a meaningless
comparison for all sorts of reasons.

We're in a new and exponentially developing Renaissance, the likes of which we
have no historical analogy for (not even the actual Renaissance or Industrial
Revolution). It's incredibly exciting, but we're in for quite a ride over the
next few decades, and our sociopolitical foundations are not prepared for it
in the slightest. I think encouraging further procrastination of preparedness
does a disservice to us all.

~~~
pixl97
_A rabbit in Australia, circa 1788._

The biggest issue with our era of technological growth, is we really have no
idea if it is sustainable socially or ecologically over periods of time.

If we take human social structures out of current growth and look at the
'people like to work and create to survive issue as an individual' we can
easily destroy the world around us. This occurs all the time in biological
systems. The great oxygen catastrophe is a prime example. Each individual
bacteria produced oxygen in order to survive. This worked fine for around a
billion years. The bacteria had no means to realized that free iron and other
rocks in the crust would absorb their byproduct only for so long. Once the
saturation point was reached free oxygen filled the atmosphere and essentially
poisoned the Earth for a time.

The question is, 'is there a technological saturation point'? How quickly will
technology continue to grow even if it is poisoning the social structures it
was built on? Will people and society adapt quickly enough?

------
Super_Jambo
A large and growing % of the economy works to create demand through marketing
& advertising. It seems like the number of jobs is more driven by the number
of potential employees than the natural demands of consumers.

I also find it interesting they highlight the decrease in professional cloth
washers something technology has allowed us to DIY. Next to an increase in
professional hair cutters something we previously DIYed with little
technology. If someone makes a good hair cutting robot what will we outsource
next besides food cooking and drink serving?

------
asgard1024
Creating jobs is easy - you can always add more people monitoring if other
people are following the rules - add more security guards, inspectors and
managers.

AFAICT the article doesn't make this distinction, and it is difficult - we
don't have a standard way to consider this problem.

The question is if it's worth it, and if it wouldn't be more useful to just
let people work less and have more free time (for example through basic
income).

------
kristofferR
Hopefully the trend is shifting soon.

Let's just hope that the way we distribute wealth changes simultaneously,
otherwise a lot of people will suffer.

------
obrero
If this is true (and I take these things with an enormous grain of salt), it
is an unfortunate thing. Tools are created to get rid of jobs, yet they create
yet more work?

In a rational society, more jobs being destroyed would be something to be
celebrated. It is a sign of a sick culture in which it would be seen as a bad
thing.

~~~
kristofferR
Totally agree. Many people seem to believe that having to give away the
majority of our most valuable non-renewable resource in life, time, in order
to actually enjoy the remainder of our time, is a fantastic system that can't
be improved upon.

Sure, having to work was (and still largely is) a necessity, but we should
make it unneccessary as soon as technologically possible.

We act like being forced to do something is a right/privilige instead of a
burden.

------
noja
Past performance does not guarantee future results.

It's just an indicator.

------
AndyMcConachie
Beware the intoxicating belief in technological determinism ;)

------
aaron695
Pointless article.

We know this, I don't think anyone has ever said otherwise. We also have had
positive growth and increased consumption over this time as well.

When it will stop is the only interesting point now since there seems to be
many indicators we are hitting limits.

------
jbb555
This is self evident.

Secondly nobody can argue that there are less things in the world that we want
to do than there were 100 years ago. They are not the same jobs but can anyone
really argue that nope, there is nothing left to do. Of course not, that's
absurd. Technology has simply changed and expanded the areas to work in.

------
ck2
I'm curious if in the 21st century those jobs are created in the same country
they are servicing.

Because India (customer service centers) and China (apple product assembly)
would say otherwise.

Technology has simply allowed easier outsourcing while funneling the profits
to fewer and fewer people.

------
jaawn
Not all technology has an equal ability to displace human workers. I'd argue
that the _most_ displacing technology is just now being developed. Sure,
_some_ technology has a neutral impact on the job market, but some!=all

------
Tycho
Would this be a fat tailed process though? In which case 140 years of data
would not be enough to draw conclusions from the change in mean, in terms of a
long term trend.

------
kristjankalm
can anyone find the link to the original paper? it seems to be by Deloitte but
I have found nothing on their website nor just googling authors' names.

------
samer66
But is it the same elsewhere?

