Automation and Jobs
The history and economics of automation anxiety -- from Luddites to robots -- and what the evidence actually says about technology and employment.
A History of Automation Anxiety
Fear of machines replacing workers is as old as machines themselves. The Luddites smashed textile looms in 1811. John Maynard Keynes warned of 'technological unemployment' in 1930. In the 1960s, a presidential commission studied whether computers would make workers obsolete. Each time, technology destroyed some jobs while creating others -- often more than it eliminated.
The pattern is robust: agriculture once employed 80% of Americans; now it employs under 2%, yet unemployment is not 78%. Manufacturing employment fell from 30% to 8% since the 1950s, but the service economy absorbed displaced workers. ATMs did not eliminate bank tellers -- they freed them to do higher-value customer service, and the number of bank branches actually increased. The question with AI and modern automation is whether this pattern will hold.