WORK

A. Automation risk

 Occupations declining in the past three years show that the risk of
automation is real. Forty-four percent of all the fastest-declining
occupations have an automation risk above 70 percent, while
economy wide, only one in four occupations face such a high risk =>
not a coincidence: there is a clear correlation between those jobs
rated as at risk for automation and those that are already declining.
 Office occupations are numerous on the list of declining occupations
(high levels of automation risk) + has been shrinking due to
technology, with the onset of personal computers causing the
elimination of 1.5 million secretary positions between 1990 and
2015 + But new advances in technology continue to lead to
shrinking office work
 example: bookkeeping clerk: overwhelmingly women earning
modest wages in a job that requires repeated data entry of
information which new computing technologies promise the ability
to do => the Institute for Women’s Policy Research finds that the
decline in office jobs such as these have cut off a meaningful path to
the middle class for working women that don’t have a four-year
college degree.
 Manufacturing: firms are largely using robots to augment rather
than replace their existing workforces + But the number of
production helpers has declined by 9 percent over the past three
years => lesser-skilled positions that involve putting articles into
machines, cleaning surfaces, … (mostly men)
 As automation plays a larger role in production, companies need
fewer of lesser-skilled workers: now require higher levels of basic
numeracy to interact with robots
 The occupation with one of the largest absolute decline are retail (au
detail) salespersons: the ubiquity of cellphones and the ability of
algorithms to help customers quickly find what they want online has
increasingly replaced the need for a store
 California has the most certified trade job losses (20k)
 Government policy represents another consistent source of
permanent job loss, example : The post-Cold War reduction in
defense spending, for example, led to 1.5 million jobs lost
 One area of immediate concern is the economic disruption that will
come from addressing the worsening crisis of climate change =>
Already, jobs in the coal mining sector have dropped by 40 percent
since 2012

 Britain’s booming gig economy has more than doubled in size over the

past three years => from one out of 20 adults in the age of working in
2016 to one out of 10
  growing numbers of legal battles fought between gig economy
companies and trades unions over workers’ rights => they want greater
protection, including the right for workers to request full-time contracts
 The world of work is changing fast and working people don’t have the
protection they need. Huge numbers are being forced to take on casual
and insecure platform work – often on top of other jobs. But as we’ve
seen with Uber too often these workers are denied their rights and are
treated like disposable labour.

 A WAVE of automation anxiety has hit the West

 The study finds that 14% of jobs across 32 countries whom economy is developed are highly
vulnerable, defined as having at least a 70% chance of automation.

 On average, Korean jobs are harder to automate than Canadian ones are. This may be
because Korean employers have found better ways to combine, in the same job, and without
reducing productivity, both routine tasks and social and creative ones, which computers or
robots cannot do + the jobs that remain in Korea appear harder to automate only because
Korean firms have already handed most of the easily automatable jobs to machines

 More than a million workers in Britain do not receive any of the holiday
pay they are guaranteed by law => Workers in the gig economy are also
not guaranteed employment rights such as sick and holiday pay, leading
to disputes about their employment status

 Trump's labor department is giving the gig economy a carte blanche to deny their workers
considering them as contractors and not employees (federal minimum wage of overtime +
paying a share of social security taxes) => let poorly paid drivers do all the actual work while
the company reaps all the value as angel investors continue to pour cash into the corporation
 Amazon and Uber against New York City => Some
business leaders worry that
Amazon’s decision to abandon its deal with New York in
Queens could hurt the city’s image as a tech hub + 25K jobs
lost + Uber worsens street traffic + working conditions for
drivers paid less than a living wage, the decimation of the
yellow cab industry

 Economists dismiss those concerns regarding AI, by and large,

arguing that workers can grab higher-skilled jobs with better
wages.

 Amazon avoids paying taxes, devalues workers and squashes

smaller businesses => criticized by Trump + E.Warren
candidate

 Hamilton  three-year experiment with a universal basic income (UBI)

scheme more effective in reducing poverty than its existing social
security system ? People happier, dignity back, have hope in future. One
of the criticisms often heard of “free money” schemes is that they create
a dependency class. The Hamilton pilot will evaluate whether
participants’ physical and mental health improve with income security,
and if they are able to maintain housing and stay engaged in work.
However, Jim Pugh, co-founder of the Universal Income Project, says
many studies have shown that very few people receiving basic income
drop out of the workforce. Some experiments have even found that basic
income increases entrepreneurship, which would ultimately lead to
more employment down the road