Reduction of Employment in U.S. due to automation

Begin quote from "Race Against the Machine". I am presently 33% into my kindle version of the book"

"During the Great Recession, nearly 1 in 12 people working in sales in America lost their job, accelerating a trend that had begun long before. In 1995, for example, 2.08 people were employed in "sales and related" occupations for every $1 million of real GDP generated income that year. By 2002 (the last year for which consistent data are available) that number had fallen to 1.79, a decline of nearly 14 percent.

If, as these examples indicate, both pattern recognition and complex communication are now so amenable to automation, are Any human skills immune? Do people have any sustainable comparative advantage as we head ever deeper into the second half of the chessboard? In the physical domain, it seems that we do for the time being.

Humanoid robots are still quite primitive, with poor fine motor skills and a habit of falling down stairs. So it doesn't appear that gardeners and restaurant busboys are in danger of being replaced by machines any time soon.

And many physical jobs also require advanced mental abilities, plumbers and nurses engage in a great deal of pattern recognition and problem solving throughout the day, and nurses also do a lot of complex communication with colleagues and patients. The difficulty of automating their work reminds us of a quote attributed to a 1965 NASA report advocating manned space flight: "Man is the lowest cost, 150 pound, non,linear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor."

End quote from "Race Against the Machine" on my Kindle at around 33%.

If interested get the book or kindle version of this book.

To understand more about this problem spreading first through technologically advanced nations worldwide it makes the argument for specialized schools to train people for the jobs that will be left.

No longer can someone expect to just work at a gas station or as a sales clerk the rest of their lives (if they are under 30) (at least if they live in the U.S).