ogc163
Superstar
A counterargument and response to study in OP
The zombie robot argument lurches on
There is no evidence that automation leads to joblessness or inequality
Report • By Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens • May 24, 2017
The media are full of stories about robots and automation destroying the jobs of the past and leaving us jobless in the future; call it the coming Robot Apocalypse. We are also told that automation and technology are responsible for the poor wage growth and inequality bedeviling the American working class in recent decades, and that looming automation will only accelerate and ratchet up these problems. Recent research by economists Daron Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University is but the latest fuel for the automation media narrative (Acemoglu and Restrepo 2017a).
What is remarkable about this media narrative is that there is a strong desire to believe it despite so little evidence to support these claims. There clearly are serious problems in the labor market that have suppressed job and wage growth for far too long; but these problems have their roots in intentional policy decisions regarding globalization, collective bargaining, labor standards, and unemployment levels, not technology.
This report highlights the paucity of the evidence behind the alleged robot apocalypse, particularly as mischaracterized in the media coverage of the 2017 Acemoglu and Restrepo (A&R) report. Yes, automation has led to job displacements in particular occupations and industries in the past, but there is no basis for claiming that automation has led—or will lead—to increased joblessness, unemployment, or wage stagnation overall. We argue that the current excessive media attention to robots and automation destroying the jobs of the past and leaving us jobless in the future is a distraction from the main issues that need to be addressed: the poor wage growth and inequality caused by policies that have shifted economic power away from low- and moderate-wage workers. It is also the case that, as Atkinson and Wu (2017) argue, our productivity growth is too low, not too high.
Rather than debating possible problems that are more than a decade way, policymakers need to focus on addressing the decades-long crisis of wage stagnation by creating good jobs and supporting wage growth. And as it turns out, policies to expand good jobs and increase wages are the same measures needed to ensure that workers potentially displaced by automation have good jobs to transition to. For these workers, the education and training touted as solutions in the mainstream robot narrative will be inadequate, just as they were not adequate to help displaced manufacturing workers over the last few decades.
Key findings
In this paper we make the following points:
Acemoglu and Restrepo’s new research does not show large and negative effects on overall employment stemming from automation.
The zombie robot argument lurches on: There is no evidence that automation leads to joblessness or inequality
The zombie robot argument lurches on
There is no evidence that automation leads to joblessness or inequality
Report • By Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens • May 24, 2017
The media are full of stories about robots and automation destroying the jobs of the past and leaving us jobless in the future; call it the coming Robot Apocalypse. We are also told that automation and technology are responsible for the poor wage growth and inequality bedeviling the American working class in recent decades, and that looming automation will only accelerate and ratchet up these problems. Recent research by economists Daron Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University is but the latest fuel for the automation media narrative (Acemoglu and Restrepo 2017a).
What is remarkable about this media narrative is that there is a strong desire to believe it despite so little evidence to support these claims. There clearly are serious problems in the labor market that have suppressed job and wage growth for far too long; but these problems have their roots in intentional policy decisions regarding globalization, collective bargaining, labor standards, and unemployment levels, not technology.
This report highlights the paucity of the evidence behind the alleged robot apocalypse, particularly as mischaracterized in the media coverage of the 2017 Acemoglu and Restrepo (A&R) report. Yes, automation has led to job displacements in particular occupations and industries in the past, but there is no basis for claiming that automation has led—or will lead—to increased joblessness, unemployment, or wage stagnation overall. We argue that the current excessive media attention to robots and automation destroying the jobs of the past and leaving us jobless in the future is a distraction from the main issues that need to be addressed: the poor wage growth and inequality caused by policies that have shifted economic power away from low- and moderate-wage workers. It is also the case that, as Atkinson and Wu (2017) argue, our productivity growth is too low, not too high.
Rather than debating possible problems that are more than a decade way, policymakers need to focus on addressing the decades-long crisis of wage stagnation by creating good jobs and supporting wage growth. And as it turns out, policies to expand good jobs and increase wages are the same measures needed to ensure that workers potentially displaced by automation have good jobs to transition to. For these workers, the education and training touted as solutions in the mainstream robot narrative will be inadequate, just as they were not adequate to help displaced manufacturing workers over the last few decades.
Key findings
In this paper we make the following points:
Acemoglu and Restrepo’s new research does not show large and negative effects on overall employment stemming from automation.
- A&R’s methodology delivers high-quality local estimates of the impact of one sliver of automation (literally looking just at robots). But their translation of these high-quality local estimates (for “commuting zones”) into national effects relies on stylized and largely unrealistic assumptions.
- Even if one takes the unreliable simulated (not estimated) national effects as given, they are small (40,000 jobs lost each year) relative to any reasonable benchmark. For example, our analysis shows that their estimated job losses from the “China trade shock” are roughly four times as large as their estimated job losses from growing robot adoption in the 2000s.
- While A&R’s report shows that “robots” are negatively correlated with employment growth across commuting zones, it finds that all other indicators of automation (nonrobot IT investment) are positively correlated or neutral with regard to employment. So even if robots displace some jobs in a given commuting zone, other automation (which presumably dwarfs robot automation in the scale of investment) creates many more jobs. It is curious that coverage of the A&R report ignores this major finding, especially since it essentially repudiates what has been the conventional wisdom for decades—that automation has hurt job growth (at least for less-credentialed Americans).
- The A&R results do not prove that automation will lead to joblessness in the future or overturn previous evidence that automation writ large has not led to higher aggregate unemployment.
- As noted above, data showing a recent deceleration in automation suggest that there is no footprint of an automation surge that can be expected to accelerate in the near future.
- Technological change and automation absolutely can, and have, displaced particular workers in particular economic sectors. But technology and automation also create dynamics (for example, falling relative prices of goods and services produced with fewer workers) that help create jobs in other sectors. And even when automation’s job-generating and job-displacing forces don’t balance out, government policy can largely ensure that automation does not lead to rising overall unemployment.
- The narrative that automation creates joblessness is inconsistent with the fact that we had substantial and ongoing automation for many decades but did not have continuously rising unemployment. And the fall in unemployment from 10 percent to below 5 percent since 2010 is inconsistent with the claim that surging automation is generating greater unemployment.
- As noted above, fluctuations in the pace of technological change have been associated with both good and bad labor market outcomes. So there is no reason to deduce that we should fear robots.
The zombie robot argument lurches on: There is no evidence that automation leads to joblessness or inequality
This dude
When does the adaptation kick in?
