Race against the Machine: The Book

If in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants- Aristotle

This is a book about how information technologies are affecting jobs, skills, wages and the economy. To understand why this is a vital subject, we need only look at the recent statistics about job growth in the United States.

By the late summer of 2011, the U.S. economy had reached a point where even bad news seemed good. The government released a report showing that 117,000 jobs had been created in July. This represented an improvement over May and June, when fewer than 100,000 total jobs had been created, so the report was well received. A headline in the August 6 edition of the New York Times declared "U.S. Reports Solid Job Growth."

Behind those rosy headlines, however, lay a thorny problem. The 117,000 new jobs weren't even enough to keep up with population growth, let alone reemploy any of the approximately 12 million Americans who had lost their jobs in the Great Recession of 2007-2009. Economist Laura D"Andrea Tyson calculated that even if job creation almost doubled, to the 208,000 jobs per month experienced throughout 2005, it would take until 2023 to close the gap opened by the recession. Job creation at the level observed during July of 2011, on the other hand, would ensure only an ever smaller percentage of employed Americans over time. And in September the government reported that absolutely no net new jobs had been created in August.

Of all the grim statistics and stories accompanying the Great Recession and subsequent recovery, those related to employment were the worst. Recessions always increase joblessness, of course, but between May 2007 and October 2009 unemployment jumped by more than 5.7 percentage points, the largest increase in the postwar period. end quote from "Race Against the Machine page 1.

So, we see that unemployment of the kind we saw from 2007 to 2009 becoming more permanent in a relative sense and caused by information technology and robotics taking away people's jobs. So, people are not only not rehired at their old jobs, there are no new jobs being created in their fields because of newer information technology manifestations. So, not only the old employees are not getting their jobs back but also those graduating high school and college aren't getting jobs either.

If it will take until 2023 right now just to employ those who have already lost their jobs what hope do new college graduates and high school graduates have between now and then?

What are all these people going to do when they cannot find careers to support themselves and their families? This is the real problem the world is facing this century.

Already we are seeing practical people forgo getting married and having a family and buying a house or in some cases even a car. This is sending ripple effects throughout the economy and preventing even more jobs from being created.

This loss of career jobs is the possibly permanent death of the middle class of the U.S. and eventually the world.

And if history teaches us anything it is that human rights go away without a strong middle class in any country.