It’s a sad time to try to put a silver lining on job losses, especially when many of my friends are accepting unemployment for the first time. But there is a silver lining for our economy few look at. New, better jobs.
Slate posted a list of all the industries that have been hurt or put out of business because of improving technology. This includes typewriters to turntables to toll collectors (replaced by E-ZPass) and film cameras. They don’t even mention horse and buggy. Agriculture is the best example. Once the dominant economic force in this country, now agriculture is less than one percent of its GDP.
The economy keeps growing because new industries create new jobs, and often these new jobs are better. They require more skill and pay more money, lifting the living conditions of the nation as a whole. This is why loosing toll workers and bank tellers to automatic systems isn’t a bad thing. It’s an opportunity.
Technology helps free human labor for the jobs technology can’t do. As technology improves, it can replace human labor more and more. Humans used to have to ride their horse or bike themselves, but soon let automobiles do the hard work. We used to do hard math on paper until calculators and computers did the work for us. This doesn’t make us lazy or stupid or worthless. It lets us move on to the next job.
Technology can’t problem solve or think on its feet like humans can (not yet at least). More people can now work as problem solvers, as nurses, technicians, or repairmen for all our gadgets. These jobs require training, so there’s also trainers to hire. Because of the qualifications, these jobs pay more than being the toll worker or bank teller. That is a good thing.
Thomas Friedman showed in his book The World is Flat why outsourcing isn’t the bad word, but a benefit to the United States and the world. China, India, and other countries take the jobs we don’t want. They take simple accounting, doctoral, or easy-to-do customer service jobs that Americans want higher wages for but don’t enjoy doing. To an Indian coming out of school, these outsourced jobs are the ticket out of poverty. They are fought over by thousands of applicants for a fraction of the pay Americans get. When they get the job, they are excited and motivated because the job is so prestigious. They make more money than they would have without the outsourced job, work more productively, saving companies money. These workers then use their new middle-class wages to buy more goods (some American even) and educate their children allowing the next-generation to have more. This is how a country builds wealth.
Watching entire industries crash is frustrating, but inevitable. The U.S. automotive industry wants a bailout for their lack of innovation and market success, but what about newspapers and the recording industry. Do they get bailouts too? The United States needs to encourage the next-generation of technology to flourish so it can replace these jobs with more, better jobs increasing our economy and wealth. There is a silver lining to even this economic collapse. It gives the nation and world a chance to learn from mistakes (however unlikely) and build a stronger nation with better jobs tomorrow. Now accepting applications.
