Robots Are Taking Some Jobs, But Not All: World Bank (mercurynews.com)

Some Amazon stores have no cashiers, and Waymo is testing self-driving taxis. Are robots taking our jobs? It depends on what you do and where you do it, according to a new report by the World Bank released this week. From a report: "Advanced economies have shed industrial jobs, but the rise of the industrial sector in East Asia has more than compensated for this loss," said the report, titled "The Changing Nature of Work." That may seem like good news in a broad sense, but not to the people whose jobs are disappearing. Technological advances and automation are making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

"Workers in some sectors benefit handsomely from technological progress, whereas those in others are displaced and have to retool to survive," the report said. "Platform technologies create huge wealth but place it in the hands of only a few people." The World Bank recommends a new social contract that includes investment in education and retraining. Would that help American workers? "Policy-makers in Washington may have talked about the need to better prepare lower-skilled workers for the future transition, but little has been done," Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, said Thursday.

Comments

Re:This is the well to do telling us not to worry

[fluffernutter]

Also people tend to forget, the people who do lose jobs will start to flood other industries. My buddy was in a similar situation and was laid off arguably due to automation. He decided to pursue his life long dream of being a residential contractor. He's pretty damn good at it too and has built quite a client list in a short time. Now he's competing with guys who would have had those jobs and the pool of available labor gets larger and wages get smaller for everyone. Just because your job cannot be done by AI, it doesn't mean that it won't be affected.