Jobs are getting scarcer, and bad public policies are making matters worse.
The Labor Department reported the economy added 287,000 in June, but that was a bounce from only 11,000 the prior month. Over the last three months, new jobs have averaged only 147,000—about two-thirds the pace from 2013 to 2015.
Unemployment increased to 4.9 percent from 4.7 percent in May, and wages were up only 2 cents per hour or less than one-tenth of a percent.
The U.S. economy is growing again—about 2.5 percent annually in the second quarter and going forward—but good jobs remain scarce and wage gains lackluster. New technologies are reducing the demand for workers but poor government policies are making matters worse.
The robotics and artificial intelligence revolution is all around us—even if we don’t yet have an android doing our housework.
Uber brings patrons cars without the dispatchers that once took calls at the local car services. At Amazon Prime, customers point and click without the aid of sales clerks and packages are increasingly assembled by robots at fulfillment centers.
Tasks requiring complex manual dexterity have proven tougher to replace but automated checkouts are spreading, and robots are at the cusp of not just taking orders at McDonald’s but also grasping and handing you hamburgers, fries and soft drinks.
Globalization accelerates these trends by forcing more aggressive substitution of machines for high-wage Americans in factories.
The next generation of Boeing jetliners will be assembled with more robots—moving and fixing components into place. What few people are left will be greatly assisted, for example, by Google Glass and software that aid in assembling the complex wiring and programming of cockpits.
Sweeping labor saving innovations have confronted us since the spear and the wheel but in the past, we moved redundant workers who often did repetitive manual tasks into emerging industries. As agriculture mechanized, workers moved to repetitive tasks in manufacturing and as factories automated, workers moved into services—for example, at convenience restaurants, shopping malls and dry cleaners.
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