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The issue of unemployment has been an ongoing debate since the Great Depression where lots of people lost jobs and really struggled during the time. Many people have different opinions on what should be done to solve the issue.

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Essential Question: How do advancements in technology affect unemployment 

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Essential Question: How do advancements in technology affect unemployment 

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labour market organisations: employees and employers

unemployment funds

applicants for adult education benefits

Finnish Centre for Pensions

Finnish Workers’ Compensation Center

Finnish Pension Alliance (TELA)

companies and employers

authorities, decision makers and legislators (including the Social Insurance Institution (SII) Kela, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, the Ministry of Education and Culture, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment, FIN-FSA, the Ministry of Education, tax administration)

educational institutions

banks

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This Ted Talk goes into depth over how advances in AI technology impacts unemployment rates. Muchhala explains that millions of people are in danger of losing their job and even career path due to AI automation of things like trucks/driving or factory lines. If this continues it could be detrimental.

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Rutika Muchhala: The Impact of A.I. on Jobs

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A pioneer of the technology space describes the impact of Artificial Intelligence on Jobs, etc.

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-Types of Unemployment

-Geographic/ Educational Disparities

-Technology and Automation

-Long Term Unemployment

-Seasonal Unemployment

-Government Intervention

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This book calls attention to the urgent steps America must take to stabilize our economy due to rapid technological change and automation. Yang talks about the shift toward automation which is about to create a huge rush of unemployment. One recent study predicts 45 million American workers will lose their jobs within the next twelve years. Rapidly advancing technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics and automation software are making millions of Americans livelihoods irrelevant.

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Andrew Yang is an entrepreneur, author, philanthropist, non-profit leader, and former 2020 presidential candidate.

After working as a lawyer and executive at several early-stage technology companies, Andrew eventually became CEO of an education company that became #1 in the country. He then started a national entrepreneurship non-profit, Venture for America, which worked to empower thousands of young entrepreneurs to bring their dynamism to communities across the country, from New Orleans and Baltimore to Denver and Detroit.

Andrew was named a Presidential Ambassador of Entrepreneurship by the White House under the Obama administration and a Champion of Change for his work with Venture for America. Initially dubbed a "longer than long shot" candidate by the New York Times in 2018, Andrew became a top-tier contender for the presidency, raising nearly $40 million in grassroots funding.

With a vision to rewrite the rules of the United States economy through a "Freedom Dividend" of $1,000 a month for every American adult, Andrew became one of the most exciting stories in the 2020 race. Andrew's nationwide support, known as the "Yang Gang," propelled him to seven Democratic primary debates, outlasting six senators, four governors, three members of congress, two mayors, and one secretary.

Following this unexpected run for president, Andrew formed the non-profit Humanity Forward, successfully lobbying Congress for direct cash relief for struggling American families during the pandemic while simultaneously distributing over $8 million directly to struggling families.

From his presidential and New York mayoral runs, Andrew has seen first-hand what's preventing our country from getting things done, and he is now directing his energies towards fixing the machinery of our stagnant democracy. With FORWARD: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy, Andrew lays out the case for a variety of democracy reform measures that can unclog the pipes of our system and realign the incentives of legislators with the wellbeing of the American people.

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The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future

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The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future - Kindle edition by Yang, Andrew. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets.

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Labor Unions Become More Influential As Technology Impacts Jobs

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Labor Unions Become More Influential As Technology Impacts Jobs

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Labor unions are having a comeback moment in the United States, and they are poised to become more influential as emerging technologies such as AI grip the U.S. job market and impact workers as well as create more jobs.

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Labor unions are having a comeback moment in the United States, and they are poised to become more influential as emerging technologies such as AI grip the U.S. job market and impact workers.

American support for unions has been rising since 2009, and an August 2023 Gallup poll suggested the public is rallying behind expanding union influence, with two out of three Americans supporting unions. The 67% of Americans who approve of labor unions today is down slightly from 71% a year ago but marks the fifth straight year this reading has exceeded its long-term average of 62%.

President Biden who has taken a position as the "most union-friendly president in American history" became the first sitting U.S. president to join picket lines alongside workers participating in the United Auto Workers Strike where concerns about union members losing out in the transition to electric vehicles was a point of contention. The UAW, whose many members work in factories that make vehicles powered by combustion engines, sought assurance that auto giants won't exploit the transition to electric vehicles to eliminate union jobs and contracts.

Union Role In The Emerging Hydrogen Economy

To further align its net-zero goals with its support of organized labor, the Biden Administration elevated the role of unions in the announcement for the U.S. Department of Energy's $7 billion Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs program, which seeks to boost the emerging hydrogen industry and support America's movement to net-zero carbons emissions.

"Labor folks in particular have a lot riding on the hydrogen economy," said Betony Jones, Director of DOE's Office of Energy Jobs during a national labor and workforce briefing for the program. "It's an opportunity to retain high-wage, union jobs as we transition to clean energy. These hubs represent a significant opportunity to build a whole new industry."

While agency officials acknowledged during the briefing that some of the Regional Hydrogen Hubs have room for improvement in how they engage labor, 65 labor unions signed letters of support for hub selectees. Twenty percent of the Clean Hydrogen Hub proposal scoring was based on the up-front commitment to engage with labor and community organizations to engage underrepresented workers.

The Energy Department will require community benefit agreements for all hubs which includes labor engagement. Three out of seven hubs already include project labor agreements with the remaining hubs strengthening their labor engagement as the agency finalizes negotiations with selectees over the next few months.

Union Role In Navigating Workplace AI

Tides are changing as unions step up to support workers navigating emerging technology sectors, and it's not just the hydrogen economy. Unions have been front and center in the debate around AI in the workplace. An example of this is the recently signed agreement by the Writers Guild of America in Hollywood around concerns of AI adoption by employers in the entertainment industry.

In a guest essay for the New York Times, Adam Seth Litwin, associate professor of industrial and labor relations at Cornell University, explained that "everyone from autoworkers to white-collar middle managers should be paying very close attention to how this deal was achieved - because it sets a monumental precedent for labor relations in a digital future."

According to Litwin, unions historically have struggled to put technology use on the bargaining table because unlike issues like wages, benefits, and conditions of employment which are subject to "in good faith" negotiation, technology constitutes a "managerial prerogative" meaning that employers can choose whether or not they are willing to negotiate use of technology like AI.

The WGA deal bucked the trend and set a new precedent that workers can and should have a say in when and how employers implement artificial intelligence at work. The WGA strike around AI was so concerning for Hollywood that it led to the actors' union SAG-AFTRA joining the W.G.A on the picket lines for the first time in 63 years.

SAG-AFTRA members also voted in favor of a strike authorization for performers working in video games, including voice and motion capture actors, who share concerns of exploitative uses of AI, such as companies making unauthorized copies of their likeness and voice.

And it is important to note that in its August 2023 survey, Gallup found overwhelming support from Americans backing Hollywood writers and actors' strike, siding with workers seeking protection from losing work to AI.

The role of unions in AI negotiations got another boost from President Biden's recent Executive Order on AI which specifically stated that, "As AI creates new jobs and industries, all workers need a seat at the table, including through collective bargaining, to ensure that they benefit from these opportunities."

The rising support for union influence in the use of AI at work is not just happening in America. I recently led a project for New America and the World Economic Forum's AI team focused on ensuring that workplace technologies advance job quality and working conditions as well as boost productivity and save money for employers. Our industry-led work affirmed the important role of unions in ensuring that employers and workers strike this "win-win" balance.

In an interview for the World Economic Forum, Tim Noonan, Director of the International Trade Union Confederation and a member of the World Economic Forum's Global AI Action Alliance, stated that "Unions sometimes are mischaracterized as technology luddites. This is far from the truth."

Noonan goes on to say, "Technology can make jobs better, and unions are ready to pursue co-creation of technology augmentation plans with employers, workers, and even technology vendors. We are seeing this activity grow as the prevalence and power of workplace technologies increases."

Building Toward Better Union Collaborations Around Technology

Recognizing the need to bolster collective bargaining agreements in response to new technologies, researchers like Lisa Kresge and her team at the University of California Labor Center have put out resources to support unions in addressing technological changes in the workplace.

Researchers and advocates also seek to support executives who want to work with, not against, unions to drive business success, including around technology adoption. For example, writing for Harvard Business Review, Roy Bahat, Thomas Kochan, and Liba Wenig Rubenstein asserted that, "companies achieve the best returns on investments in new technology when they merge implementation with complementary changes in work processes, employee training, and worker input."

In its race to compete globally and grow the American middle class, the United States has committed to leading in technological innovation as seen with the recent passage of the CHIPS and Science Act.

As the Biden Administration begins to implement its technology-empowered industrial policy agenda, its support of organized labor will well-position labor unions to play a greater and more influential role in representing worker perspectives as emerging technologies continues to impact workplaces across industries.

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Labor Unions Become More Influential As Technology Impacts Jobs

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Unions are having a come-back moment in the United States, and will have a bigger role to play as emerging technologies such as AI grip the U.S. job market.

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United States Unemployment Rate (1950-present)

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United States Unemployment Rate (1950-present)

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This is a graph that shows the % of unemployment in America since 1950. Peaks of unemployment hit around 1985, 2010, 2021.

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Unemployment Rate in the United States increased to 3.90 percent in October from 3.80 percent in September of 2023. This page provides the latest reported value for - United States Unemployment Rate - plus previous releases, historical high and low, short-term forecast and long-term prediction, economic calendar, survey consensus and news.

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This video explains that Unemployment is where someone actively searches for a job but doesn't currently have one. Unemployment is how many people measure the strength of the economy.

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What Is Unemployment? Understanding Causes, Types, Measurement

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Unemployment is the term for when a person who is actively seeking a job is unable to find work.

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The Fear of Technology-Driven unemployment and its empirical base

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The Fear of Technology-Driven unemployment and its empirical base

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New technologies may replace human labor, but can simultaneously create jobs if workers are needed to use these technologies or if new economic activities emerge. At the same time, technology-driven productivity growth may increase disposable income, stimulating a demand-induced employment expansion.

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The debate as to whether or not technological change replaces more jobs than it creates dates back to the 18th century. Yet, it continues to resonate in recent policy discussions (Mokyr et al. 2015). Fuelled by striking numbers, such as 47% of US jobs at high risk of becoming automated in the near future (Frey and Osborne 2017), policymakers, managers, and researchers are increasingly investing effort to help adapt labour markets and social systems for a time when most of the tasks performed by humans would be executed by machinery. This trend has been accompanied by a surge of economic research on interactions between technology, labour, and the economy.

Technological change can affect labour through various channels

Both empirically and theoretically, the effects of technological change on labour can arise through multiple channels. Many technologies are designed to save human labour by replacing workers with machinery. However, economic theory suggests that several compensating mechanisms can counterbalance the initial labour-saving impact of new technologies (Acemoglu and Restrepo 2019, Baldwin et al. 2021). First, technological change can increase the demand for labour by creating new jobs that are directly associated with the new technology. Furthermore, technology-induced increases in productivity release production resources that can raise the demand for labour in other tasks within the same firm or industry.

Second, technology can raise the demand for labour through increased consumer demand. This occurs when new technologies boost productivity growth and, in turn, lead to lower production costs and consumer prices. Moreover, new technologies can raise the marginal product of labour and capital, resulting in both higher wages and returns to capital. The two latter effects contribute to a rise in real income. If demand is sufficiently elastic and positively responds to increases in income and decreases in prices, technologies can stimulate a demand-induced expansion of output (Bessen 2020).

Systematically reviewing the empirical evidence on technology and employment

In a recent paper (Hötte et al. 2022) we refer to these channels as (1) replacement, (2) reinstatement, and (3) real income effect, and analyse their empirical basis through a systematic literature review.

We identify 127 relevant studies providing evidence on technological change and its impact on employment during the past four decades. Aiming to capture the impact of technological change at the frontier, we focus on studies looking into industrialised economies. Furthermore, to uncover potential underlying heterogeneity, we pin down five broad categories of technology measures that are predominantly studied in the literature by distinguishing between: (1) information and communication technology (ICT); (2) robot-diffusion; (3) innovation surveys; (4) productivity; and (5) a residual category that contains various alternative indicators.

Labour-creation mutes the labour-replacing impact of technologies

We find that the number of studies that support the labour replacement effect is more than offset by the number of studies that support the labour-creating/reinstating and real income effects (Figure 1, Panels a-c). This observation is reaffirmed when looking at the studies that analyse the net employment effect of technological change, which in turn suggests the net impact of technology on labour to be rather positive than negative (Figure 1, panel d).

Figure 1 Share of studies by type of result reported for each effect examined

Source: Calculations based on 127 studies collected from systematic literature review in Hötte et al. (2022).

Findings are heterogeneous across technology groups

The findings for the five distinct technology categories show broadly similar patterns, but with some subtle differences which are worth highlighting.

ICT: There is no evidence that the replacement effect dominates the reinstatement and real income effects combined. However, the results suggest that the reinstated jobs qualitatively differ from the jobs replaced. The diffusion of ICT mostly has positive employment implications for high-skill, non-routine, and service jobs.

Robots: We observe that the labour-saving impact is generally offset by robot-induced reinstatement of labour. In contrast to the ICT studies, robot studies tend not to touch upon the complementarity between robots and human labour in the performance of tasks. Hence, the labour-creating effect of robots is most likely related to the production, operation, and maintenance of this type of technology.

Innovation: Studies that rely upon innovation as a measure of technology often argue that the employment impact depends on the type of innovation. While product innovation is shown to be mostly labour-creating, the evidence on the employment impact of process innovation remains mixed.

Productivity: When considering productivity improvements as a proxy for technological change, we find a roughly equal balance between the number of empirical studies that provide support for the replacement and the two labour-creating mechanisms. The employment gains have been mostly favourable for non-production, high-skill, and service jobs. These studies are often linked to theories that argue that technological change leads to structural change with a reallocation of economic activity down the supply chain from more primary towards increasingly processed sectors and services. Nonetheless, the net employment effects observed in these studies are rather negative than positive.

Other: Lastly, the findings from studies that rely on other/indirect measures of technology indicate that the labour replacing effect is offset by the labour-creating effect. The employment effects have been mostly positive for non-production labour, yet some studies also find positive employment effects for low-skilled workers, particularly in service jobs.

Anxieties over widespread technology-driven unemployment lack an empirical base

Although we find larger support for the labour-creating effects of technological change, we are careful in concluding that technology has a positive net effect on employment. Nevertheless, we do safely conclude that the labour replacing effect of technology is typically offset by a range of compensating mechanisms that lead to labour creation or reinstatement. Hence, there does not appear to be an empirical foundation for the fear of technology-driven massive unemployment.

Despite the fact that we find no strong evidence for a negative net employment effect in quantitative terms, the qualitative impact and distributional aspects of technological change on employment cannot be neglected. In particular, low-skill production and manufacturing workers have been adversely affected by technological change (Blanas et al. 2019). Hence, effective upskilling and reskilling strategies should remain at the forefront of policymaking. Many occupations in both the lower and middle part of the skill distribution will continue to evolve and demand a changing set of skills due to technological progress. Therefore, employment perspectives of relatively vulnerable groups can be significantly improved by investing in the right skill sets. Nonetheless, some workers who experience job losses might not be able to engage in upskilling or make the transition to new jobs. For these groups, targeted social support systems will remain important.

Summing up and the road ahead

To the best of our knowledge, ours is the most comprehensive systematic literature review on the technology-labour nexus, and it is the first that carefully distinguishes different technologies and channels of impact. This study offers an empirical basis for the political and scientific debate on the labour market effect of technological change.

However, while the empirical studies considered in this work mostly cover the impact of widely diffused technologies, the scope of tasks that may be automated in the near future is continuously expanding (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2014). Empirical evidence on the impact of artificial intelligence, quantum computing, virtual reality, biotechnology, nanotechnology, renewable energy, and other emerging technologies that will soon impact our economy remains limited.

In fact, none of the studies in this column assesses the impact of this new wave of technological innovation. To that end, it is unclear to what extent our findings can be extrapolated into the future (Baldwin 2020); real-time monitoring and ongoing research is needed to more fully understand the emerging impact of the introduction of new technologies on the future of work.

References

Acemoğlu, D and P Restrepo (2019), "Automation and New Tasks: How Technology Displaces and Reinstates Labor", Journal of Economic Perspectives 33(2): 3-30.

Baldwin, R (2019), The globotics upheaval: Globalization, robotics, and the future of work, Oxford University Press.

Baldwin, R, J I Haaland, and A J Venables (2021), " Jobs and technology in general equilibrium: A three-elasticities approach ", CEPR Discussion Paper 15739.

Bessen, J (2020), "Automation and jobs: when technology boosts employment", Economic Policy 34(100): 589-626.

Blanas, S, G Gancia, and S Y Lee (2019), " Machines and workers: How different technologies affect different workers ", VoxEU.org, 10 October.

Brynjolfsson, E and A McAfee (2014), The second machine age: Work, progress, and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies, WW Norton & Company.

Frey, C B and M A Osborne (2017), "The future of employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?", Technological Forecasting and Social Change 114: 254-280.

Hötte, K, M Somers, and A Theodorakopoulos (2022), " Technology and jobs: A systematic literature review ", Oxford Martin Working Paper Series on Technological and Economic Change No. 2022-2.

Mokyr, J, C Vickers, and N L Ziebarth (2015), "The history of technological anxiety and the future of economic growth: Is this time different?", Journal of Economic Perspectives 29(3): 31-50.

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The fear of technology-driven unemployment and its empirical base

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New technologies may replace human labour, but can simultaneously create jobs if workers are needed to use these technologies or if new economic activities emerge. At the same time, technology-driven productivity growth may increase disposable income, stimulating a demand-induced employment expansion.

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Self-Driving Trucks: Are Truck Drivers Out of a Job?

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Self-Driving Trucks: Are Truck Drivers Out of a Job?

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As the tech world grows, many companies continue to invest a lot of time and money in this field. Here are a few of the most notable companies making the biggest strides towards perfecting this technology.

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Self-Driving Trucks: Are Truck Drivers Out of a Job? | ATBS

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When it comes to self-driving trucks, the main thing on truck drivers’ minds is the security of their jobs. Let’s take a closer look at self-driving trucks.