The best reason to doubt Yang\u2019s story is contained in productivity statistics, which measure the output of the gainfully employed and which traditionally rise rapidly during periods of technological change \u2014 because even if workers are losing their jobs to the spinning jenny or the automobile, other workers should be increasing their productivity with the new technology\u2019s assistance.<\/p>\n
Lately this hasn\u2019t been happening. Instead productivity growth in the developed world has decelerated over the last decade. To quote<\/a> a recent summary, in mature economies \u201clabor productivity growth rates halved from an average annual rate of 2.3 percent in the period 2000-2007 to 1.2 percent from 2010-2017.\u201d Combine that with the slow, consistent trend back toward full employment in the American economy \u2014 again, not what you\u2019d expect if the labor market were being upended by technology \u2014 and the story of our times looks more like stasis than automated revolution, more like the stagnation<\/a> discerned by a number of heterodox thinkers than the acceleration of conventional wisdom.<\/p>\n Yang and I wrangled<\/a> about just this question when he graciously came on our Op-Ed podcast, The Argument. He suggested that what we\u2019re seeing in the statistics is that automation for now<\/em> is just holding down wages and shunting people out of industrial occupations and into low-paying service sector work \u2026 and that come a few more breakthroughs and the next recession, when companies will inevitably seek roboticized efficiency, you\u2019ll start to get far more significant disruption.<\/p>\n He could be right; he\u2019s certainly right that automation has had some impact on middle-class jobs, influencing the populism roiling Western politics. But it seems equally plausible that the real state of things is captured by my colleague Neal Boudette\u2019s update<\/a> on the status of the self-driving car, long portrayed as a technological breakthrough poised to throw lots of people \u2014 from long-distance truckers to cabdrivers \u2014 out of work.<\/p>\n Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n The future will be delayed. Maybe.https:\/\/t.co\/hTchYuXh4u<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Tom Maguire (@Tom_Maguire) July 23, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n