The End of Jobs by Jeff Wald

Author:Jeff Wald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: N/A
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2020-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

The labor force participation rate remains stable at 63 percent for the next twenty years as two trends offset each other: the baby boomers retiring and extended healthy working life leading to delayed retirement.

Due to people working longer and increased immigration, the total size of the labor force increases from 164 million today to 176 million; the US is the only industrialized country to increase the size of its labor force.

Union membership will reverse its decline and reach 20 percent but through entirely new union structures that are loose associations across companies, organized digitally.

The federal minimum wage will be $20 per hour as the online worker movement is successful in pushing local and then federal changes.

The percent of people with a four-year college degree peaks at 35 percent in 2020, declining to 30 percent as technical schools provide more skills-based education.

Worker-retraining programs are standard at all companies and are done with VR technology as the changing nature of work means continuous learning is a requirement for all workers.

There have been no sweeping regulatory changes: no third employment classification, no Universal Basic Income, no huge changes (but rather incremental ones) to the way we tax capital, labor, or wealth, because these changes are driven by economic crises and we will avoid a crisis over the next twenty years.

The on-demand labor market peaks at 40 percent of the labor force in 2034 and remains constant at that level for generations as technology continues to bend the labor equation to the maximum process that can be done by on-demand labor.

Overall the prediction is that we have a much more balanced society, where the cost of production has fallen, allowing almost every member of society to massively benefit from higher standards of living. We will be ever closer to a society free from want and that is immeasurably good. However, the transition to this wonderful place will not be easy.

We face this next revolution at a time when our counterbalancing forces are especially weak. Unions are at their lowest level as a percent of the labor force in over one hundred years. Regulations are being rolled back at the federal level, and the social safety net is under tremendous financial pressure due to an aging population. All this is occurring while government debt levels are at historic, and some would say unsustainable, levels, and we have the most unequal society in recent history.

Not a great place to start this transition. But it’s not really the start. The age of robots and AI has already begun. The power balance has already started to shift, although somewhat mitigated by the tight labor market. Robots have already displaced nearly 40 percent of workers in manufacturing. Robotic process automation software is just the new name enterprise software companies have been using to streamline processes and eliminate jobs for years. Jobs lost to robots and AI is not something new at all.

And the counterbalancing forces are beginning their rise. Union membership may be low, but union sentiment is at its highest levels.

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