Most Jobs Will Be Lost

As usual we are a reactive society even when it comes to social planning. We know many jobs will soon be lost to advanced technology, but we don’t seem to be doing anything about it. The time is coming closer when jobs for common folks will be almost non-existent and plans have to be made at the highest echelon of government to try and compensate for this. Since we are a free society it will be very hard to do, because business controls most of the jobs and that is why agreements will have to be made on many different points. One might have to be that people working less hours will still make the same amount of money, but that will certainly be a problem since the whole idea of replacing people with machines and robots is to save money. Things always seem to work out eventually, but sometimes it takes many years of pain before this happens. Remember this, if most workers lose their jobs it will also hurt business since no one will have money to buy products.

In what sectors will most of the jobs be lost? According to a recent report from the University of Oxford, there are sectors which will be almost completely wiped out. Almost anything which requires someone to check facts and create something based on these facts will be gone and replaced by robots. We are talking about people like tax preparers, new account clerks, tellers, cashiers and far more occupations. Need an accountant, your local robot accountant will be glad to perform this service and probably make less mistakes. A lot of occupations which seemed safe are also being threatened. One would think that the construction industry would be a safe bet, after all what machines can do all the work to build a house or skyscraper? The answer is a printer. There are already printers which have built entire houses, thus eliminating a huge chunk of the cost of building those structures. This means those carpenters, brick masons, riggers, electricians and such might have their hours cut drastically.

When you walk into your local hamburger joint and you give your order to a person who then gives it to the cook, it is easy to see how these people can be replaced. There are already machines which can cook burgers so it would be a simple matter to have a robot take your order, give it to the hamburger machine and probably the fry and soda machines and then let you know when your order was ready. The robot would then take your cash or log in your credit card. There has been a movement of late to do away with cash and the reason might be to make it easier for machines which would then only have to be capable of reading the credit card and conducting the withdrawal from the company. This eliminates a cash slot, change giving and such, making for a simpler machine. This means many of the summer jobs which college students rely on would be gone. It could turn out there would only be one human employed in these places just in case something goes wrong. They may not even have that one person, just a button to push which registers somewhere else.

The entire world is going to be changed and governments along with businesses and people will have to change the way they do things. Many of the people we depend on today who work in services such as plumbers and repair men of all different stripes will no longer be employed. When people in the relatively near future need a repair there will be a robot sent over which can repair everything not just plumbing for example. There will be no more out of code work done since these robots will depend on programs which instruct them exactly what to do. A home repair firm which might employ all sorts of repairmen will now only need a few robots which can do all those jobs. So what happens to all those skilled workmen? We lose them and maybe in the future we lose the ability to be skilled also, because who needs skill when we have robots? It might even turn out those repair business go completely out of business because home robots will do all the repairs. It seems to me it is only going to be a few more decades before the more advanced countries have people with a lot of time on their hands since most will not have jobs. No jobs means no one will want to come here anymore and that will probably take care of our immigration problem.

There are some professions which are predicted to only lose about 2% of their jobs according to the study and they are physicians, surgeons, teachers, therapists, curators, anthropologists, archaeologists, pharmacists, engineers, material scientists, soil and plant scientists, biologists, chief executives. Other professions predicted to only lose up to 5% are orthodontists, photographers, health and safety engineers, lawyers, craft artists, veterinarians, writers and authors, astronomers, architects, mathematicians, editors, political scientists.

I believe the above choices could very easily be wrong. While doctors are necessary, there numbers should be cut significantly by machines which will be able to diagnose our illnesses and prescribe medicines, doing away with a good portion of their numbers. Even less safe will be nurses. There are already robots going around and distributing medicines, checking blood pressure and temperatures. One thing which never seems to change is the fact even though we are flooded with lawyers they seem to be resistant to the trend and might actually benefit from it as more and more lawsuits are filed against not only the business employing robots, but also the companies maintaining them and building them.

Society needs a plan on how it intends to make sure people will have enough money to get along even if they can’t get a job. Perhaps we will become a moneyless society somehow, like the society in the future on Star Trek? I may not know the answer to the problem, but I do know the problem is coming.