Structural unemployment is defined as a mismatch between the demand in the labor market and the skills and locations of workers seeking unemployment. With technology being brought into every sector of the economy, consumers are dealing less with people and jobs that can be automated by computers or machines are being done so at an alarming rate. Start ups whose innovation in the past has helped to bring many jobs to the table during recessionary periods are hiring a third less than 20 years ago. Many smart technologies have single-handedly removed jobs that technicians in the past would have been trained and paid a good salary to perform. Many experienced workers are having their jobs replaced by the younger generation who generally is more comfortable using newer software despite whether or not they have formal training
The reductionist theory of Technological determinism states that technology drives the development of society and cultural values. Technology is advancing at a faster rate than society and the current generation of entry level employees is realizing this as seen by the recent rapid influx of degrees dealing with software, hardware and technology management. As Karl Marx would have believed, the people who control new technology also have a relative increase in social power. Technology autonomously promotes stratification which re-balances social power and thus empowers those who understand it. Living standards are sure to fall overall for the middle class and adaptation to the market is a must for their survival in the long run. Many politicians run on a platform claiming that they are fighting for the middle class and it will be interesting to see whether or not the Obama administration will intervene to bring back jobs in some of the sectors hardest hit by technology like manufacturing and retail. Curves such as the Beveridge Curve help to show shocks of cyclical and structural unemployment in a graphical sense.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-recession-tech-kill-middle-class-jobs-051306434--finance.html
Isn't it ironic that we are taking jobs away from ourselves as a result of our OWN technology? Yikes. As much of a technological aficionado as I am, I still do believe that having a human mind in tandem with technology may very well be the tightest combination. Perhaps we are becoming parents in a sense: we create the technology, "teach" it to do some task(s), and eventually let it go on its own, only there as a check in case anything goes wrong. Even then, having a human hand in the mix will allow the technology to be perfected, but can it ever reach perfection? For example, my own fault aside, I missed two classes last week because Google Calendar had malfunctioned. Again, regardless of my own stupdity there, technology is not 100% foolproof, but it's becoming as close to that percentage as possible... which isn't good for us.
ReplyDeleteBrandon, thanks for this post. I think you are right. Many popular articles on technological unemployment assume a technological determinist worldview as if it is the technology that is killing the jobs. We will talk about this in a few weeks. But I wonder how you think we should answer and criticize people who talk in this deterministic way.
ReplyDeleteFrankie's comment brings up a couple of important issues. First, there is the problem of depending on (potentially) faulty technology. But perhaps more important is the question of how we can "humanize" technological systems.