Automation and Technological Change: The Outlook for Workers and Economies

Since the advent of mechanization, predictions regarding the demise of jobs have accompanied each labor-altering technological advance. In 1930, John Maynard Keynes coined the phrase “technological unemployment” to express the idea that technological change may lead to gross and potentially permanent declines in employment (Keynes 2010). In recent decades, the rise of big data, machine learning and robotics promised a dramatic reorganization of industrialized economies, which always seems to be just around the corner. While past episodes of technological progress did not lead to permanent unemployment, many fear this time is different. Dire predictions have been made, such as a report by Frey and Osborne (2017) arguing that, with current and emerging technology, over 47% of all jobs stand to be automated in the coming decades.