Unhelpful beginnings

For politicians not paying much attention, there is an easy, plausible line to take when pushed to say something about technology and the future of work. That line goes something like this: automation is going to replace lots of jobs in the coming years, and to deal with it, we need to upskill people to do the jobs that technology will not be able to do. As a narrative, it is plausible because it is not entirely wrong. However, if social democrats and liberals want to be future ready, they are going to have to come up with a far more rounded and comprehensive answer to what amounts to a historic process of economic transformation.

A lively debate is under way on how technology adoption is going to impact the labour market of the future. Some argue that technology change is going to create massive unemployment; others that automation anxiety is nothing new and that previous waves of technology adoption have created at least as many jobs as they have replaced.

Neither extreme is that helpful. The first position tends to downplay the extent to which new jobs may be created and to assume that the pace of change will be far quicker than is likely to be the case. It sees automation almost as an event, not as a longer-term historical process.

The second position is far too sanguine in its assumption that just because previous periods of technology adoption have ultimately created as many jobs as they replaced, this will inevitably be the outcome this time. It is also blind to the social devastation that may accompany the transition to the age of automation.

As Daniel Susskind pointed out in his book A World Without Work, during the Industrial Revolution: