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posted by martyb on Thursday November 30 2017, @03:59PM   Printer-friendly
from the become-a-plumber dept.

Automation could wipe out 375-800 million jobs globally in the next 13 years, including 16-54 million in the U.S. But don't worry, there's a new job waiting for you:

The McKinsey Global Institute cautions that as many as 375 million workers will need to switch occupational categories by 2030 due to automation.

[...] "The model where people go to school for the first 20 years of life and work for the next 40 or 50 years is broken," Susan Lund, a partner for the McKinsey Global Institute and co-author of the report, told CNN Tech. "We're going to have to think about learning and training throughout the course of your career."

[...] "The dire predictions that robots are taking our jobs are overblown," Lund said. "Yes, work will be automated, [but] there will be enough jobs for everyone in most areas." The authors don't expect automation will displace jobs involving managing people, social interactions or applying expertise. Gardeners, plumbers, child and elder-care workers are among those facing less risk from automation.

Also at Bloomberg.


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  • (Score: 1) by pdfernhout on Friday December 01 2017, @04:00AM (3 children)

    by pdfernhout (5984) on Friday December 01 2017, @04:00AM (#603792) Homepage

    From 2010: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p14bAe6AzhA [youtube.com]
    "The Richest Man in the World: A parable about robotics, abundance, technological change, unemployment, happiness, and a basic income."

    --
    The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
  • (Score: 2) by dak664 on Friday December 01 2017, @03:06PM (2 children)

    by dak664 (2433) on Friday December 01 2017, @03:06PM (#603916)

    Interesting article by Hagens and White distinguishes between "work" necessary for survival and "jobs" useful for social cohesion. Work can be automated (as long as surplus energy is available) but our ape brains would still want to endure 40 hours per week of a "job" to show others we have earned our banana pellets.

      http://www.resilience.org/stories/2017-11-30/gdp-jobs-and-fossil-largesse/ [resilience.org]

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday December 01 2017, @04:30PM (1 child)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday December 01 2017, @04:30PM (#603950)

      I don't know where people get this crazy idea.

      There's plenty of people who are perfectly happy to not do any work at all and live shallow, meaningless lives: just look at trophy wives of rich men. There's also lots of people (this includes me) who'd love to not have to work, but instead be free to work on their own personal projects to satisfy their own whims, rather than to prove anything to others. There's a bunch of people who like to travel endlessly, and only work just enough to afford to do this. Now you'll probably counter with something about personal projects still being "work", but it's really not, it's a way of keeping busy and satisfying your own drive to do something, whether it's entertainment or productive. Is an artist who somehow doesn't need to support himself, and just likes to lock himself in a studio and paint pictures "working"? No, he's satisfying his urge to be creative. Also, the 40 hour thing is bogus, and is a pretty modern invention. Multiple studies have found that workers are happier with fewer hours and just about as productive usually.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Friday December 01 2017, @04:31PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday December 01 2017, @04:31PM (#603951)

        (This site needs to allow editing...)

        I'll tell you where some of this crazy idea comes from actually: Protestantism. It's a religious idea that work (esp. meaningless toiling) is somehow good for you.