Actually this is untrue.
The labor force participation rate peaked in the US in 1998 and globally in 1991. This is a percentage metric so the raw numbers did not follow. However, government jobs in the US (both local, state, and federal) now accounts for 25% of the total. That is up from 15%.
So during the greatest technological revolution, we have seen a decline especially when the bullshit jobs of government are taken into account.
This makes total sense since technology is deflationary. That is a jobs killer especially when it is at a pace that is unforeseen.
no labor force participation is not tied to this.
I have to disagree.
No way AI kills more jobs than it allows us to create.
You can disagree with the validity of the statistic but I would disagree that it is not tied to this discussion.
Technology is deflationary. The reason why there is any basis against the job loss is the fact that humans traditionally have been slow to adopt new technology. This is most evident with the baby boomers, the largest segment of the US population for decades.
They are dying off leaving a more technically advanced society.
Baby boomers is a bad stat.
they are the last of the analog generations.
with low neuroplasticity due to the world they grew up in.
Gen X is the 1st analog / digital generation and as the generation that built the modern world is the bridge generation that can guide humanity into the new technically advanced societies without losing their humanity.
Millenials are the workers / serf of the digital age that believe in aethism and used ageism to try and get rid of Gen X in the workforce.
Gen Z is the new generation that will build the 1st turning (we are in the 4th turning)
Only Millenials will be gutted by AI and I for one feel they brought upon themselves acting like a "laptop workforce" elite overlords of the world.
They will perish childish and sad.
1st off labor force partication is easily manipulated by women joining the work force in the 70s / 80s
plus all of that is taken with polling by the government. So we have no real numbers, only government reports that we all know have been manipulated throughout the years.
If you feel AI is a job killer, in my mind that is the same as saying automobiles were job killers because the horse industry would suffer.
When they added robots to the auto industry floors in the 80s by the 2000s had made more jobs than it "replaced"
I have to strongly disagree with this and refer to the fact that using government data points will not work as those are best guess estimates.
I mean they do the unemployment numbers by calling businesses and asking them how many people they hired and fired.
I get a lot of those surveys and you can lie so easily.
That would explain the increase but not the decrease. Have Americans started having more babies, requiring one parent to stay home, thus leaving the workforce. All evidence seems to be the contrary.
That would hold true for most statistical analysis on a macro scale.
I would say comparing anything in the digital era to 100 years ago is going to be off base. Sure you can point to an industry. What we are seeing is not industry specific. Entire industries may or may not get replaced. That said, employees across most industries are going to be affected, especially if they look at a computer all day.
Network administrators have known for decades they could automate large portions of their jobs tasks out....freeing up time which most use to screw off.
Few employees show up to work and actually put in a full day. Social media usage explodes during work hours. Then we have the layoffs that are already taking place in the tech sector.
What is at play here is a transformation of the economic model. The capital-labor paradigm is breaking down. Cognitive output is increasingly becoming driven by capital, not labor.
You are a business owner, if you can spend money on hiring someone or get the job done autonomous, for a fraction of the cost, which are you going to do? This is where many white (not blue collar) jobs are cooked.
The cost per token is dropping like a stone. When an employee can be replaced for $100 per year, what do you think businesses, both small and large will do?
the employee's not showing up and putting in a full day, is an interesting point.
in my mind this is the "laptop class" Elon talks about.
during COVID they acted like the elite. Sitting in their homes afraid to go out and collecting pay checks and government money while asking the rest of society to toil away in the fields to make sure they had food and TP.
They are an artificial creation and yes the model of bloated corporate offices with 5,000 workers doing nothing (looking at you twitter) will be gutted.
but that has been going on for years just it gets more main street vibes because of AI.
In some industries that allow it. As stated in another thread, we will not see this in education or healthcare. Whatever waste is there will remain.
I disagree. Education is on its last legs. It was created post civil war to create a workforce for a world that no longer exists.
The internet / AI instructors / apprenticeships will become the education of the future which is really just the education of the past with modern tech.
Healthcare's waste stems from health insurance not healthcare.
We have movement on gutting this entire system and re-building it.
Never confuse the 2. Obamacare tried to make them one and the same but they are not.
A lot of healthcare advances are coming, espicially in longevity.
ok 1st off. I agree it will replace white collar jobs.
in my mind the explosion of knowledge based white collar jobs happened in the late 90s.
they are all TEMP jobs anyways (30 years) as they are being replaced by AI.
they were not real jobs anyways just temp jobs created with the invention of the internet.
yes businesses will lay off people to save money, but most will use those people to expand their businesses in other roles.
My view is if 1 million white collar temp knowledge workers are laid off and they have to help fill the 8 million open other jobs in the economy.
then AI did not replace any jobs it helped re-align the workforce to the jobs that are needed by eliminating "temp knowledge based jobs" that we no longer need.
I don't buy into the narrative.
The employment and government numbers have been manipulated since Obama.
I think you overlook the fact that we have been living, in the US, under socialism since at least the 1990s. This has caused the explosion in government's hands on the economy. We not only have government but also industries it controls such as education and healthcare (two of the least efficient industries out there).
Will this change? Hard to tell in spite of the current administration. But outside of that, where regulation is in the way, we will see a crushing.
The JOLTS numbers are full of ghost-jobs. There arent that many available. Companies keeps jobs posted often to provide the illusion of growth and to keep getting applications to push others out.
As for jobs being created, any that do evolve, will be done with AI. The ones getting automated out of HR are not going to repurposed within the organization.
Keep in mind we still dont have a major recession on hand. There is still decade how bad it is. We will come to the point where things are bad (cant escape the biz cycle which hits roughly in 2026).
Another 2008 type situation will see this put on steroids.
Oh I agree with this.
but once again I feel HR depts were a "woke" creation.
they become something that was never needed in a company.
those people will either retire, stay at home (no loss in economic productivity) or find a part time job in retail to earn some money (help fill those jobs)
once again I feel this is just a re-alignment of people with the jobs that we should have and eliminate the fake / temp jobs created in corporate America throughout the 90s.