If new shiny objects with unprecedented potential have you worried about your place in the workforce, you’re not alone. Automation Anxiety is the fear that machines will soon replace and take their jobs away from them. Is it a valid fear, or simply a resistance to change?
Let’s backtrack to when this all started. Automation anxiety emerged during the early stages of the Industrial Revolution in England. Inventions like The Spinning Jenny, which automated the production of textiles, replaced many skilled craftsmen. Low skilled laborers were then hired in their place to complete a fraction of the work for a fraction of the pay. It was a blessing and a curse; labor costs for big textile producers decreased significantly while tensions between skilled textile workers and machines only increased. This eventually leading to resistance such as the Luddite Movement in 1811-1816, where textile workers broke into factories and destroyed the very machines involved in their displacement.
With each massive jump in technological advancement, came new waves of anxiety among workers; such as motor vehicles in the 1920s and computers in the 1950s. In 1962, President Kennedy ranked automation as the number one threat to employment in America. From a pure numbers standpoint at the time, he was right. Indeed, lots of jobs were decimated by new tech.
Throughout the twentieth century, technology replaced over 8 million farm workers, 7 million factory workers, 1 million railroad workers, hundreds of thousands of telephone operators, and many other occupations that we will never hear about again. Remember the milkman? An udder tragedy.
But on the greener side, we also created jobs. These technological advances, in addition to the rise of women entering the workforce, increased the rate of eligible workers of all skill levels. In turn, US employment rates steadily increased over 20 percent between 1950 and 2010. Since 1980, the US has generally maintained an employment rate of 80%, excluding data from times of recession.
It’s easy to focus on the initial jobs lost in the wake of new technology, the numbers are there and they are staggering. But technology creates jobs too. With new tech, comes new jobs and whole new industries for people who design and maintain that technology. With new jobs, we achieve higher productivity as doing things gets easier. When industries can do more with less, they expand, creating more jobs and reaching more places.
The key logic being: automation does displace workers; however, when taking into account the impacts of technological advancements on the creation of new opportunities for the workforce, automation doesn’t seem so threatening. Over time we see a balance of jobs lost and jobs gained, it just may take some time before you see the latter.
All of this to say, it’s happening again, and it’s going to be alright.
The round of advances we are facing today are clear: artificial intelligence is here and has already begun replacing jobs. Automation is now taking over roles in customer service, content creation, data-entry, design, traditional storytelling in journalism, and soon to be more. We may be in the phase of job displacement, but there is no better time than now to roll with the punches, and start learning; how to produce more in less time. The only real way to resist this being a drastic change for us is to join the tech revolution once again.
Experiment with different AI tools to understand their capabilities, informing how you can integrate AI into your workflow to your advantage
Utilize AI to augment your work, not replace it, by allowing AI to handle routine tasks so you can focus on higher-level, human-centric work
Develop adaptability and a growth mindset to continuously learn, adapt to change, and embrace new technologies as the job market evolves