Jobs: human, automation and robots

Workplaces evolve to incorporate machines, and people find a way to fit in.

Over the past quarter century, about a third of the new jobs created in the United States were types that did not exist, or barely existed, twenty-five years ago.

In the next transformation, humans are likely to replace jobs lost to automation with new jobs we cannot yet imagine.  

And economists may start counting growth in the robot population as a positive sign for economic growth, the same way that today they analyze growth in the human population.

To assess whether population trends are pushing a nation to rise or to fall, look 

• first at growth in the working-age population, which sets a baseline for how fast the economy can grow.  
• Then track what countries are doing to bring more workers into the talent pool, quickly.  Are they opening doors to the elderly, to women, to foreigners, even to robots?   

In a world facing the challenge of growing labour shortages, it is all hands - human or automated - on deck