The Future of Work: The Threat of Technology

As our current generation matures, graduates from college and moves onto the professional world, we are faced with problems with our position in the work force that were unknown to the generation before us. Job security, company loyalty and making a good living were generally promised in the past, even without a college degree; however, now we face major issues such as advanced technology taking the place of traditional work force systems and laborers, which are the major cause, for what most economists predict, “a jobless future.”(1)

In my opinion, the biggest difference between our generation and those before us is our incredibly advanced technology. Scientists and engineers predict that within two decades we will have almost unlimited energy, food and clean water, advances in medicine that will allow us to live longer and healthier lives, and robots and artificial intelligence that will be able to do tasks for us such as drive our cars, manufacture our goods and do our daily chores. (1) These advances will greatly impact our lifestyles as well as the state of our workforce and how to runs. We have already seen a trend towards alternative-types of companies, completely different than what we are traditionally use to. An example of this is Uber, a car service company and app that was founded in San Francisco, California in 2009. It has only been running for six years but already operates in fifty-three different countries and made more than $1 billion in sales in 2014 alone. SherpaVentures, a venture-capital company, calculated that in 2013 Uber and two other similar car services, Lyft and Sidecar, made $14 million in revenues in San Francisco, which is half of what the established taxi companies made. (2) Another example of this is the upcoming company and app Handy. The company finds its customers self-employed home-helps available in the right place and at the right time. The company provides service in twenty-nine of the biggest cities in the United States, as well as Toronto, Vancouver and six British cities. Much like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar, Handy has been giving established construction and repair companies a run for their money. Since its founding in 2011, it has raised more than $40 million in venture capital. (2) While these apps and companies are very convenient for consumers, it is causing major issues for companies and laborers. As these companies continue on the rise, they will beat out traditional companies, like taxi services and repair companies, causing many people to lose their jobs.

While traditional companies are in risk of being beat out by these “high-tech” companies, laborers in general are also in risk. One article I found while researching, “We’re heading towards a jobless future, no matter what the government does” by Vivek Wadhwa, painted an incredibly futuristic and “jobless” future:

“Self-driving cars will be commercially available by the end of this decade and will eventually displace human drivers – just as automobiles displaced the horse and bus – and will eliminate the jobs of taxi, bus, and truck drivers. Drones will take the jobs of postman and delivery people … The pesky humans crash into each other, suffer from road rage, rush headlong into traffic jams, and need to be monitored by traffic police … The operating cost of some robots is now less than the salary of an average Chinese worker and unlike humans, robots don’t complain, join labor unions, or get distracted … Robots will take the jobs of farmers, pharmacists and grocery clerks.”

Robots clearly have a great advantage over humans and in times of economic hardship, many companies will choose to “hire” robots rather than humans. While a workforce completely overrun with robots seems like a far stretch, with our continued technological advances it is not impossible.

In 2014, the unemployment rate for the United States was 5.5%. While unemployment rates have been on a relatively steady decrease over the past couple of years, it is still a major issue in our country. With the advancement of technology, some economists predict that we will be faced with another unemployment crisis, one that will be a lot harder to find the solution to. (3)

Sources:

1) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/07/21/were-heading-into-a-jobless-future-no-matter-what-the-government-does/

2) http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21637355-freelance-workers-available-moments-notice-will-reshape-nature-companies-and

3) http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate