A Good Month for Work, as AJSN Down 300,000 to 17.3 Million Jobs Short

At first glance, this morning’s Bureau of Labor Statistics October employment report was nondescript.  There were 161,000 net new nonfarm positions created, a tad below the publicized 175,000 expectation, but still more than needed for population increase.  Official seasonally-adjusted joblessness was down a tenth of a point to 4.9%, offset by labor force participation down the same to 62.8% and employment to population also off 0.1% to 59.7%, with all three of those results returning to where they were in August.  The count of those out of work for 27 weeks or longer held again at 2.0 million. 

The other primary metrics, though, were better.  Those working part-time for economic reasons, or unsuccessfully seeking full-time employment while holding on to something shorter, kept its 200,000 September improvement to stay at 5.9 million.  Unadjusted joblessness improved a tenth of a percent to 4.7%.  And, most dramatically in this generally dull month, average private nonfarm hourly earnings rose 10 cents per hour, and 13 cents over the originally stated September result, to reach $25.92.  That is double the inflation rate, and noteworthy to see after last month’s net 9 cent gain. 

What really made these results a success were changes in the categories of marginal attachment.  Those reporting wanting to work but not having looked for it in the previous year tallied 78,000 fewer.  People describing themselves as discouraged fell 66,000, a lot for one month, to 487,000, and counts of those in the “other” and “family responsibilities” groups declined 59,000 and 56,000. 

So how many more positions could be quickly filled if getting one were as easy as getting a pizza?  The American Job Shortage Number, which takes shares of all of these statuses, shows that we could now absorb 300,000 fewer than in September, as follows:

The AJSN also improved over a year ago, when, at 17.485 million, it reflected higher official unemployment and many more with discouraged status, but fewer expatriates, fewer interested but not having looked for a year or more, and of course fewer people claiming to not want work at all, which rises annually like clockwork.  That is an improvement from September, when the AJSN had its first year-over-year worsening since 2010.  With unemployment down, only 38.6% of these jobs would be taken by those officially jobless, a yet smaller share.

Overall, October was positive, especially since, per last month’s post, we are approaching the good times’ limit.  I am glad to see the less publicized statuses improving.  Will it last?  We will see.  In the meantime, the turtle did, once more, take a small step forward.

Iceland and Jobs: What’s Going On There?

Last week I returned from driving around a country about which people make many erroneous statements.  First, Iceland is not outrageously cold – its winters are about the same temperatures as Chicago’s.  Second, while it has permanent glaciers, most of it looks green, actually rivalling Ireland.  Third, while its population was once unusually homogeneous, now only a minority are stereotypically blonde Scandinavians.  Fourth, while once poor it is now hardly rustic, with a per-capita GDP, 30^th in the world at $46,100, fitting in with others nearby, one spot above Denmark’s and four below Sweden’s. 

Despite a low share of natural economic resources (world-class scenery doesn’t quite count), Icelanders have done, in many ways, an outstanding job with their country.  In 2015, it was ranked the world’s 13th most developed by the United Nations, down from first in the world, soon before their three-year political and economic crisis, in 2007-2008. It has universal health care, the fourth highest life expectancy, lower smoking and obesity rates than in most of Europe, and unusually low pollution.  In 2015 it had almost 1.3 million foreign tourists, four times the resident population.  For those who like that sort of thing, Iceland also has one of the lowest rates of economic inequality, and is informal enough that their people still have, in effect, no last names.  I can personally attest that it has its share of gravel roads, but most of them and all of its paved ones seem in excellent condition.  Taxes are not obscene, and include a flat 22.75% on personal income, only 18% on corporate, a value-added tax (VAT) of 11% on food, room rentals, and other things consumed by humans, and a 24% VAT on everything else.  Unemployment was last seen at 3.1%.  Their government aggressively dealt with financial transgressions during their crisis, and required some bankers to make up a part of their microscopic total of 147 prisoners, a real reason why their currency, the Icelandic krona (ISK), is stable and strong today. 

 

On the other side, there’s one thing that pervades the experience of locals and visitors alike.  It’s expensive!  Not only, as one would think, are the mass of imported goods higher than in their original countries, but so is almost everything else.  In Alaska, locally caught salmon is a relative bargain.  Not so for the lamb and fish raised and caught in Iceland.  Restaurant meals, even plates of those things, seemed to start at ISK 3000, or over $26.  Although tips and tax are included, that’s a lot.  The largest supermarket chains, Netto, Kronan, and especially Bonus, mitigate that somewhat, and while fast food is often available and cheaper it is around double American rates, with the lowest-priced Subway footlong ISK 1199 or $10.51.  Postage on a domestic letter in that small country is ISK 160 ($1.40), and even a postcard to the United States, or elsewhere outside Europe, costs ISK 285 ($2.50).  Items for tourists were no exception either, with ordinary souvenir magnets usually ISK 899 and playing cards almost always more.  Even things where I would not think prices would vary much from one country to the other, such as silver bracelet charms, were at least double those of similar items elsewhere.  That puts a lot of pressure on locals as well as tourists, and is probably the main reason why many have more than one job.  Although I suspect high pay for workers is a real reason, and accounts for such things as unmanned fuel stations, there is no national minimum wage as such.  Yet what is in effect a lack of positions paying comfortable wages in relation to cost of living, and a general sense of balance, did not stop large numbers of Icelanders from unsuccessfully protesting a $3 billion aluminum smelting installation, despite its thoroughly modern environmental safeguards.    

To what does all this add up?  Iceland is certainly an admirable country, but, despite its long-time cultural emphasis on self-reliance, people’s choices are more limited.  There are far fewer opportunities to become truly wealthy there than in the United States.  However, its advantages in health and life expectancy are real, and lofty food prices may help that.  Almost everyone there who wants to can work, which, in 2016, is quite a strength for anywhere fully developed.  Accordingly, while I would never want to force such a system on Americans, little Iceland has plenty to teach us.  And as we have, in the past anyway, excelled at borrowing from other countries, we should keep their ways in mind.  

The Three Reasonable Presidential Candidates on Jobs: Good, Bad, and Indifferent Proposals

Three people running for president are worthy of your consideration.  What do they say they will do about employment?

In March, Hillary Clinton, later to become the Democratic Party nominee, put forth an economic plan.  She asked to roll back tax breaks for American companies moving jobs out of this country (excellent idea, and in the right direction), and create a new levy for those taking their headquarters overseas (also good, since many people work at these offices).  She wanted to raise the minimum wage (bad – we don’t want to reduce the number of positions right now), and upped her proposed floor from $12 to $15 later in the campaign (even worse).  She thinks employers should be required to pay for family leave (wrong – let them compete by offering these benefits voluntarily), and proposed the College Affordability Plan, to refinance student debt and provide free or discounted tuition to all university enrollees in need (not sure – seems off beam in principle, but could stave off a huge bubble in the form of what is now almost $1.4 trillion in US student debt).  Over the summer she spoke of a National Infrastructure Plan, costing $27 billion per year to build, repair, and improve highways, bridges, airports, water mains, and more.  That last item is the best of the candidates’ employment proposals, and I am glad to see more people suggesting it. 

Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson believes that those in government, including himself, do not create jobs – they come from, as his website puts it, “entrepreneurs, businesses, and economic prosperity.”  Accordingly, he emphasizes deregulation as the best tool to achieve employment growth – he and running mate William Weld credit that for the unusual improvement achieved in joblessness in New Mexico and Massachusetts, where they were governors.  Unfortunately, as much as I like him, and am impressed by his and Weld’s succeeding this way in their states, that course seems insufficient.  I hope, and expect, that a President Johnson would take more aggressive steps if we had a recession.

Green Party nominee Jill Stein expects to generate what she calls “millions of jobs” by changing energy use, nationally and completely, to renewable sources by 2030.  She also would get more people working by “investing in public transit, sustainable agriculture, and conservation.”  She considers employment to be “a right,” and says we should “create living-wage jobs for every American who needs work.”  I would feel better about her basis for putting more people to work if she were not against petroleum and natural gas-based sources, fields with many jobs, so much.  Since hardly every person who wants to be employed needs a “living wage,” I can’t support her there either.  However, her opinion on people’s entitlement to work does match one of the five comprehensive jobs-crisis solutions.

Those are your choices.  My views are above, but others also have strong, and sometimes differing, ones on these initiatives’ merits, how we could pay for them, and on the effect they would have on budget deficits and the national debt.  Which of these solutions are realistic and which are not?  How much are we willing to spend to get more Americans working?  Those are questions for you to answer, as you prepare for your November 8th decision.

"The Wealth of Humans" – The Latest Work’s New Age Successor Hits and Misses

Ever since I published what was the definitive book on the permanent jobs crisis almost five years ago, I have been possessive about that topic.  I think of it as mine.  That may seem imperious and probably is, but if you have written an award-winning volume based on a clear-cut but truly neglected thesis, you are likely to share that feeling. 

Last month, Ryan Avent, senior editor and columnist at The Economist, released about the third American book since the fall of 2011 on that subject, though he didn’t quite call it a permanent crisis, opting for “labour abundance” instead.  The Wealth of Humans attempted a broader scope, as shown by its subtitle Work, Power, and Status in the Twenty-First Century.  How good a descendant is it?

First, Avent did not cite Work’s New Age, but recapped, and had slightly different views, on the core issues I presented there.  He settled on the phrase “the labour glut” for what I called excess capacity, which he also called “the sheer abundance of labour,” and said that workers’ numbers “hold down wages.”  Indeed, he spent an entire chapter explaining the simple supply and demand truth that “higher wages are so economically elusive.”  He described why we are not going back to “the bygone age of mass employment,” which as I showed was due to new products never needing large amounts of employee time per item to produce.  He explained the breaking of the connection between pay and output through Baumol’s Cost Disease, an American economist’s principle, instead of by invoking scalability, or the production of iterations of goods and services at tiny additional cost, as I did.  He referred to the “digitally disappointing era,” which I specified as the lack of widespread computer-driven productivity improvement before the late 1990s.  He was also skeptical of the ability of further schooling as a solution to economic weakness, being in all fairness more eloquent than I by saying that “the low-hanging educational fruit has been picked.”    

Since The Wealth of Humans was published in 2016 instead of 2012, Avent had access to much newer information, and he covered it well.  He touched on writings by Thomas Piketty and others.  He discussed what he called “hyperglobalization,” and noted that many countries, the “never-developing world,” are not only still not contributing intellectual resources but have bleak prospects to do so soon.  He acknowledged the pooling of masses of money in a small set of companies and individuals by calling it “reserve accumulation,” correctly noted that that phenomenon explains why less of it has trickled down than it would if it were in more needy hands, and said that has led to “secular stagnation.”  He summarized progress up to press time in robotics and driverless cars, and showed its importance to the future of American employment.  He named and interpreted many other news items, including previous Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s infamous comment about 47% of Americans being “victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them” (referring mostly to those collecting Social Security at retirement age after decades of work).  He said, as I have implied but not put as pithily, that “in a way, it would be much easier if the robots were simply taking all the jobs,” meaning that our relatively good times have unduly blunted our awareness of the historical transition we are living through.

On one subject, though, the author fell into traps.  He stated that “car ownership could be obsolete,” which has no chance to happen soon among rural residents.  He cited Uber drivers averaging $19 net per hour as opposed to traditional taxi operators earning $13, which can only be due to poor cost accounting, but followed it up with descriptions of how cab driving is becoming more automated, and thus, according to his other examples, will allow them to be less skilled and in turn to be paid less.  These slip-ups, though, look suspiciously old in this fast-moving field, and may reflect his collecting information a year or more before the book’s publication date, when these issues were not as well understood.

As opposed to these two errors, I flagged four places where I thought Avent’s analysis was especially insightful.  One of his subtheses was that the ways of managing technological growth socially are lagging behind the progress itself.  He advocated more government spending, without which we are most unlikely to adequately deal with the jobs crisis.  He proposed an immigration policy similar to those I saw in Australia, New Zealand, and the European Union, that of allowing people in who can do jobs where there are not enough workers, and, additionally, those who can perform tasks especially valuable to an aging population.  Last, I’m still working out what he meant by saying “software is eating everything,” but I suspect something about which we all should be aware. 

On conclusions, I found his vague.  He said we should be “generous,” but did not define that clearly enough for me to understand.  I did not see any mention of guaranteed basic income, still the most obvious possible jobs-crisis solution and about which there has been a lot of post-2011 commentary and developments.  He stopped short of evaluating or even mentioning other ways out. 

Overall, Ryan Avent would have benefited by reading Work’s New Age.  That he works for a major publication is no excuse.  Information is available from a variety of sources, and this time it was personally clear, to me, that some were not considered.  The Wealth of Humans has a lot to offer, but it missed too much. 

Who will be next on this topic? 

We’re Leveling Off Now: AJSN Shows We’re Short 17.64 Million Jobs, Worse Than a Year Ago

This morning, the jobs, population, and expatriate-count data told us something unfavorable. 

No, it’s not the net new nonfarm positions added, which, while at 156,000 for September fell a bit short of the apparent consensus 174,000 projection.  No, it’s not the commonly publicized seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate, which rose from 4.9% to 5.0%.  It’s not the number of long-term jobless, those out 27 weeks or longer, which stayed the same at 2.0 million.  And it’s certainly not the other major statistics.  Those improved:  the labor force participation rate was up 0.1% to 62.9 percent; the employment to population ratio, the best metric for determining how common it is for Americans to actually be working, climbed the same amount to 59.8%; the count of people employed part-time for economic reasons, or unsuccessfully seeking full-time labor while on the job but for fewer hours than that, dropped 200,000, a lot for one month, to 5.9 million; unadjusted unemployment was down from 5.0% to 4.8%; and average hourly wages went up a penny more than inflation, 6 cents, to $25.79.   

It’s not even, on the surface of it, September’s American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, which tells in one number our latent demand for work, or how many additional positions could be quickly filled if being hired were quick, easy, and routine.  That improved 356,000, as follows:

  

This August to September change was nothing meaningful, as more people are employed in the latter month.  Our cause for concern is that we are no longer improving.  Finally, after about 80 months of year-over-year gains, going back gives us a lower AJSN.  Here is that one:

    

How did we manage to get 221,000 jobs shorter when they have been created faster than our rising working-age population?  The difference is mostly in the fifth category from the bottom, “did not search for work in previous year.”  These people, whose numbers grew 268,000 from a year ago, say they want employment but are not looking for it.  There are also more American expatriates, some of whom would return if they thought they could be hired here, than in September 2015.  The same goes for those in school or training and for people officially unemployed, who, though only 30,000 more numerous, at their estimated rate of 90% taking readily available work still adds 27,000 to the difference.

What does this mean?  First, it tells us that we are not only breaking even with jobs demand, but may be getting worse.  Second, it reinforces that our prosperity improvement is leveling off.  Third, it reminds us that most people who would work if the country had an employment supply similar to that recently in western North Dakota are not officially jobless – in fact, they would absorb only 39% of the new positions those in our country could now fill. 

Beyond that, we’re still looking good.  We’re creating jobs well.  Wages, which still have reason to be held back by the worker surplus, are hanging on.  It is particularly favorable to see the two employment ratios get further away from post-1977 record territory.  Yet we now have no reason to think that in a year or two, times will be better.  The turtle took a small step forward, but he might not soon have many more of those.      

Gary Johnson for President

We, as quadrennially always, are faced with deciding who will lead our country in the next four years.

Primary voters for Democrats chose former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a rock-solid member of their establishment long expected to be nominated.  Those voting for Republicans collectively made a dissimilar decision.  They went with Donald Trump, a businessman who would not have made any commentator’s list of the 20 most likely nominees two years ago. 

Voters have real reasons to be discontented with these choices. 

The most common general objections to Clinton are not the problem.  Her use of private email servers for classified information, and her failure to admit it and work with instead of against investigators, was poorly judged, but minor.  Her lying after murders of Americans in Benghazi was bad behavior, but hardly heinous.  Her disposition, which often seems distasteful, is, for purposes of governance, a trivial matter.  However, because of her mainstream status, she is certain to be overly influenced by her party base, which has already come out in anti-jobs initiatives such as the $15-per-hour minimum wage she now backs.  Also, and more importantly, we are now finishing the second term of a president whose actions are similar to hers.  Barack Obama, when you factor out allegations and unjustified interpretations of his intentions, has governed as a slightly conservative Democrat; Clinton, as shown especially by her views on social issues and foreign policy, promises more of the same.  For a country stuck in legislative gridlock and apparently unable to address many of its worst problems, eight years of one philosophy is enough. 

As for Trump, he has disqualified himself over and over again.  I could write thousands of words recapping his reprehensible statements, but that has already been done well by others, so I only summarize that he has been bullying, undiplomatic, defamatory, hostile, violence-inciting, misogynistic, unapologetic, and much more.  The New York Times has maintained a list of different “people, places and things” he has insulted on Twitter alone, along with documentation – as of Thursday morning, it was up to 258.  He has shown little substance on issues, with almost nothing fleshed out or even consistent beyond immigration and trade policy.  He has shown that he is enamored with Vladimir Putin, Russian president and de facto dictator, to an extent certain to warp his international-relations judgment.  The amount and frequency of his lying has been almost unbelievably prolific, even for a politician.  His ability as a businessman, his claim to fame, is questionable at best, with thousands of lawsuits against him, at least four bankruptcies, a high rate of business failures, a documented record of employee abuse and supplier nonpayment, and, since he has singularly refused to release his tax returns, real doubts about how much he has actually earned.  He arrived shockingly unprepared for September’s debate.  He has repeatedly revealed a hair-trigger mentality totally unsuitable for anyone with the ability to launch nuclear weapons.  And, perhaps more disturbing than anything else about him, his inflammatory rhetoric and his lack of a clearly defined platform (he is no conservative) are unnervingly similar to Adolf Hitler’s; if you read Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel It Can’t Happen Here, about the rise of an American dictator through the political system, you will be stunned by the similarities between protagonist Buzz Windrip and Trump.  He contends only with 1908’s William Jennings Bryan as the worst major-party nominee in the latest two centuries, and in the privacy of the voting booth, nobody, except maybe his friends and family members, should choose him. 

Another candidate is worthy of mention.  Jill Stein of the Green Party offers a lot of ideas from the political left of Obama and Clinton.  She is earnest, well-spoken, and admirable in her own way, but is simply too extreme, with her plans such as eliminating all fossil-fuel use by 2030 not only unworkable but in the wrong direction for a country struggling with internal divisions and a permanent jobs crisis.  Against that, we could depend on Congress to keep her worst propositions in check.    

So what can we do?   

Into the gap, like a breath of fresh air, is Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson.  As befitting one with that ideology he chooses freedom over conservatism or liberality, and picks his positions accordingly.  There are weaknesses in this approach – for example, as I have written before, the jobs shortage causes critical damage to the practice and idea of free markets by causing too many people to have nothing to spend – but in general, it is successful.  On social issues, such as abortion, same-sex marriage, and marijuana legalization, it is clear that conservatives are on the wrong side of history.  Remembering how my sister was denied one at the White Sox baseball bat day 50 years ago because she was a girl seems bizarre to me now – when our grandchildren hit middle age, they will think the same about gay couples once being denied the right to marry.  On economic issues, our national debt doubled during the previous Republican administration and is on track to double again during this Democratic one, to about $20,000,000,000,000 – while if that were presented balance-sheet style, with federal assets such as 85% of the land in Nevada offsetting it, it would not seem so scary, but it still seems out of control.  Almost no liberals seem aware that making workers more expensive is certain to cut demand for them.  There are many financial luxuries, from farm subsidies to the National Endowment for the Arts, which we simply cannot afford to cover with taxpayer’s money.

Johnson’s platform, posted in detail on www.johnsonweld.com/issues, not only generally takes the best from the Democratic and Republican sides, but adds planks neither one has.  He advocates, and will work for, tax reform to reward “productivity, savings and investment.”  He stands for congressional term limits.  He wants to do what he and his running mate William Weld did in the states they governed, New Mexico and Massachusetts, to cut their unemployment, both absolutely and relative to others.  He would be better on one issue than any of the others, as “having served as a Governor of a border state” he knows that “solving immigration problems is not as easy as building a wall or simply offering amnesty.”  He would push for criminal justice reform, especially by reducing drug-related incarceration, and would turn a great federal expense into a large revenue source by “legalizing and regulating marijuana.”  He would keep abortion legal, and would not only allow more local discretion in school policy, but would eliminate the Department of Education.  He would avoid protectionism.  He has pledged to submit a balanced federal budget, as he and Weld did with their states.  More critical than any one of these stances is that, in order to succeed with them, he would be forced to be bipartisan by getting approval for his efforts from both sides.  It is clear to me that if Johnson had been nominated as a Republican, he would now be way ahead of Clinton and everyone else.              

We do have viable alternatives.  Of the four most prominent presidential candidates, three would not disgrace the office, and would, in the main, represent the country well.  It is reasonable to choose Clinton or Stein instead of Johnson.  As for opening up our choice to all four, if 2016 is not the year we should seriously consider those other than Democrats or Republicans, what one will be?  This time, it allows us to choose the best candidate, the choice of whom is clearer than it has been for several election cycles. 

Royal Flush Press endorses Gary Johnson for president.    

Robots Marching On, Adding to Efficiency, Offsetting Globalization, And, Yes, Cutting Jobs

These may be relatively good economic times, with official unemployment about as low as it can get during a permanent jobs crisis, but that hasn’t stopped advances in the implementation and theory of robotics.  What’s happened over the past five months?

In Financial Times on May 3^rd, the title of Sam Fleming’s article, “Why robots are coming for US service jobs,” means it could contain only two words:  They’re cheaper.  Fleming addressed more than that, though, with a good rundown of positions susceptible to replacement by automatons, and correctly showed that the jobs now most at risk were white-collar and caregiving ones.  He also cited a McKinsey Global Institute study claiming that 40% of American workers had occupations in which half their hours went to tasks that could already, with current technology, be automated.  Another piece in the same publication that day, “Rise of the robots is sparking an investment boom,” showed that while venture capital investments there had to double in 2015 just to reach a still-puny $587 million, the entire market projects to reach $135 billion in three years.  That’s not as massive as it could be either, and both numbers are and will be exceeded by those for driverless vehicles.

Two days later, Financial Times continued its series by asking us to “meet the cobots,” automata designed to lighten loads for existing workers instead of replacing them.  Author Peggy Hollinger seemed to imply that, as a result, robots now won’t cost jobs.  This idea is nothing new; when I visited a Florida postal sorting center over 15 years ago, a large yellow one moved heavy packages around alongside dozens of human workers, and precipitated anything but hostile reactions, as our tour guide told us that “everyone likes Big Bird.”  When robots only assist, they serve as tools similar to computers, copiers, or even brooms, so there’s nothing special here on that count either.

On May 14^th, Phil Torres weighed in in Salon with “Fear our new robot overlords:  This is why you need to take artificial intelligence seriously.”  He started with the Terminator movie series, which introduced me, for one, to the idea of autonomous goal-seeking devices automatically having potential problems, and showed how artificial general intelligence, or AGI, could, as happened in the first Terminator feature, destroy many or all humans if we fail at “making sure their values,” not just their objectives, “align with ours.”  This material is well worth reading, especially for those not yet familiar with it.

Another Financial Times article, May 16^th’s “Legal firms unleash office automatons,” reported something old as if it were new.  Automated legal searches were contemporary enough for me to cite them five years ago in Work’s New Age, and while they are now getting better and more common, their changes seem only incremental.  The idea of “Uberisation,” or more work being done by lower-paid workers, is nothing fresh either, with at least a strong foothold in law long before that label would have been understood.

In Harvard Business Review, Vasant Dhar’s ambitious May 17^th “When to Trust Robots with Decisions, and When Not To,” presented a grid of products and needs positioned by predictability (high = fighter drones and cataract surgery;  low = stock trading and effectiveness of online advertising) and cost per mistake (high = driverless cars and diabetes prediction; low = spam filtering and early education support).  Since the best areas for automated solutions are clearly those with high predictability and low cost per mistake, progress will move from those toward the other corner.  Dhar’s Decision Automation Map, showing this and more, is a fine tool, and he succeeded admirably at showing where we might best concentrate upcoming robotic and computer efforts.

On May 25^th, Fox News published “Pizza Hut rolling out robot servers in Japan.”  They cost only $1,600 apiece, and offer “a more efficient dining experience” as well as paying for themselves remarkably quickly.  Such automata are also under consideration by Carls Jr. and McDonalds, to name only two fast-food chains, and will certainly spread widely, if they have as little as mediocre customer acceptance, as minimum wages increase.

The Economist, in June 4^th’s “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” cited a Centre for European Economic Research working paper claiming that since relatively few entire jobs can be fully automated, we have “reasons to be less afraid about the march of the machines.”  The major flaw in this thinking is that great cost savings motivate employers to rearrange positions by concentrating hard-to-mechanize tasks in those jobs to be still held by humans.  It also makes the mistake of taking the past, where people in manufacturing positions easily found service jobs, as a proxy for the present, in which we know of no type of paid work capable of replacing them in turn.

Trevor Moss reported in the June 21^st Wall Street Journal “Robots on Track to Bump Humans from Call-Center Jobs.”  Why not?  And it’s been happening for years – you see it when you call in with a problem and a robotic voice asks you several technical questions.  A decade or more ago, most companies moved what was called Tier 1 support, or preliminary and easy-to-fix problem-solving, to cheaper-labor countries, and now those responsibilities are increasingly being covered by machines.  There is no case that more and more sophisticated issues will not be handled, as time goes on, in the same way.

“Industrial robot sales hit record,” Financial Times pointed out June 22^nd. Though worldwide sales reached only 248,000 last year, it is noteworthy that China, once known as a cheap-labor source, got a quarter of them.  The automotive, electrical, and electronics industries are the largest consumers, and we can safely bet that number will increase tenfold within as many years.  Robotic restaurant servers costing only the equivalent of $1,200 apiece are also arriving in that country, with high acceptance offsetting lower labor savings, as documented in The Wall Street Journal’s July 24^th “In China, a Robot’s Place Is in the Kitchen.” 

Finally, Xerox released a list of 19 current and near-future robotic innovations.  They are robotic pharmacist, Japan’s robot hotel, digital nursing, robotic process automation, virtual customer service agents, self-flying planes, self-driving cars, driverless trains, digital barista, automated passport control, automatic translation, automatic report writing, legal work, Amazon’s “robot army,” robot security guard, the automated college professor, home automation, the robot bartender, and robot-assisted surgery.  You can read more about them at  https://www.xerox.com/en-us/insights/robotic-innovations?CMP=BAC_Repo2016&SECTN=IN_&SITE=TheAltantic_&SIZE=1x1.

After all this reporting of advancement, The Washington Post’s Robert J. Samuelson again told us, on August 17^th, that “our robot panic is overblown.”  He again fell into traps by saying “lost jobs and destroyed industries give way, over time, to new industries and jobs” (unless they don’t), and “if robots cut costs, the savings have to go somewhere” (into the massive, stagnant pools of money held by the largest corporations and wealthiest individuals).  He partially redeemed himself by stating that “government’s main role is to maintain the conditions that make hiring profitable,” which, though incomplete, should be a worthy goal for both political parties, but in general, Samuelson, who I am certain does not personally invest only in stocks which have gone up in the past, should know better.

That’s all for now.  There will be more, in this area contending only with self-driving cars for the most press and the greatest effect on American employment.  I will continue to keep you up to date.