End Of Employment Singularity

A combination of cheap foreign labor (CFL) and improving automation may one day soon bring about the EndOfEmploymentSingularity where new fields don't open up fast enough to replace those lost to CFL and automation. Unemployment would gradually creep up, never again to return to the "old days".

Although "true AI" is perhaps still a ways away, incremental improvements are still happening, displacing incrementally more and more jobs.

Further, many countries wish to prevent consumerism, for religious or cultural reasons, meaning that new consumers are not appearing to absorb improved manufacturing capability. Improved technology used to follow increased consumption, but that may not hold world-wide.

The "next new thing" that could deliver employees from technically obsolete or off-shored skills used to be fairly clear. Clerical, office machine repair/operation, and data-entry work could be seen as a replacement for manufacturing when manufacturing started going offshore in the 1970's. Demographic studies at the time showed a clear trend in a growing services industry. And of course, IT replaced factory engineering as far as those technically inclined.

And before that, when agriculture was shrinking, factory-related jobs were booming. Farmers became factory workers, office construction workers, automobile repairers, and warehouse or loading-dock workers.

However, the future is murky at this point in history. The saying "nobody makes money off the web" has some truth in it. CraigsList killed perhaps tens of thousands of newspaper ad jobs, but only employs about 50 people. The same goes for bank tellers, specialty store clerks, and travel agencies. And web-site design is for the most part as offshore-able as manufacturing is. The current situation seems to be one of:

A. We reached the EndOfEmploymentSingularity.
B. The "next thing" is already here, we just cannot recognize it yet.
C. The "next thing" will arrive soon, we just have to be patient.

We are at a unique point in history. I've never seen evidence of a similar "opaque era" from the perspective of those who lived in it. Sure, some grumbled during past transitions, but they were usually those who didn't study demographics and were just nostalgic for the "old ways".

Stabs in the Dark

The only possible "next thing" I can see is "keeping an eye on things". With vast automation and CFL, there's a lot of things that can go wrong due to devious mayhem or miscommunication. Trusted individuals may be needed to monitor all that mass productivity to make sure things are on track. It's a stretch, though, that this alone will make up for the volume of loss.

Another long-shot is perhaps "personal marketing" where you talk your friends into buying crap they don't really need or voting a certain way in exchange for discounts or favors. See AttentionEconomy.

Future bragging: "Oh yeah? Well it took three robots to replace me!"

CategoryFuture, CategoryEmployment