The standard argument is that manufacturing as a whole must now be seen as a quaint, buggy-whip-making type activity — one that technology and economic growth have decreed is no longer a viable creator of jobs. But not to worry! The economy marches on, creating more and better opportunities for all those folks displaced from manufacturing jobs. Automation is simply replacing drudge work, as it always has. The real economy is in information, now, not stuff. Everyone has the chance to move up the value chain.
The problem with that argument is that our machines are far better at working with information than we are, except where it comes to actually understanding information, where we still have a bit of an edge. Automation is poised to start killing white-collar jobs with the same ruthless zeal that it used in going after blue-collar jobs. In fact, the use of the future tense in that sentence is superfluous. This is already happening. How else can we account for an economy that is growing overall — however slowly — while the total number of people who work continues to go down?
I think the real question is what is the rate of change? Manufacturing labor productivity has been growing at 5% per year for a long time. This has resulted in massive per capita increases in output but is slow enough for us to adapt to it. If the automation revolution happens much faster, then our institutions may struggle to cope.
Hmmm.
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