The Future, Jobs, and Work

Jobs matter. One candidate just lost an election in part because of the perception she didn’t care about those without them, and another won on the promise that he can bring them back. The unemployment rate (4.6 percent) tells only a partial story, because there is a larger figure (9.8 percent) that includes those too discouraged to look for work or who want full-time work but have to settle for part-time. The labor force participation rate (62 percent) is the lowest in decades. So creating jobs matters. But so does creating meaningful work. Jobs provide pay, but not all provide a feeling of contribution, a sense of dignity, doing something we feel good about. In short, many jobs use us but we don’t feel put to good use. And, as Lyndon Johnson put it, “to hunger for use and to go unused is the worst hunger of all.” A society that cares about the moral self-worth as well as the financial well-being of its citizens must pay attention to jobs and work. We needs jobs to put food on the table, but we need ennobling work to put fire in the heart. We also need ways to value unpaid work. Parents and grandparents who care for children at home, for example, as well as those who serve as unpaid caretakers for the ill or the elderly gain satisfaction for their hunger for use, but they sacrifice financially in doing so. This need to focus on both jobs and work is more important to address due to globalization and technology. There is bad but also good news on those fronts. Getting less of the former and more of the latter calls for creative policy, programs, and incentives. Globalization has outsourced jobs (think manufacturing, apparel and services) to cheaper, foreign labor. In their enlightening book, Race Against the Machine, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee highlight the impact of technology. Robotics has eliminated assembly jobs, and machines have eliminated jobs such as tellers and toll booth operators, to cite just some examples. Artificial intelligence will begin to replace even more jobs. Truck, cab and Uber drivers may not be able to compete with self-driving vehicles. Amazon is launching amazon.go, a self-service grocery store that eliminates the need for check-out clerks. Jobs at the higher end of the economic ladder will not be immune. Paralegals, medical technicians, and some jobs in education and financial services could find themselves threatened by cognitive computing. This is the bad news. The good news is that new jobs will be created. If we are smart about it, we can replace jobs that are low pay and low in work satisfaction with those that provide both more pay more and more meaningful work. This will require investment in technologies and partnerships that will dramatically increase the rate of innovation and the associated job creation needed to put the nation at the forefront of new kinds of jobs. In that respect, trying to retain or bring back jobs that are […]

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