Technological Unemployment Research Articles

Automation, unemployment, and insurance

How should policymakers respond to the risk of technological unemployment that automation brings? First, I develop a procedure for answering this question that consults, rather than usurps, individuals’ own attitudes and ambitions towards that risk. I call this the insurance argument. A distinctive virtue of this view is that it dispenses with the need to appeal to a class of controversial reasons about the value of employment, and so is consistent with the demands of liberal political morality. Second, I appeal to the insurance argument to show that governments ought not simply to provide those who are displaced by machines with unemployment benefits. Instead, it must offer re-training programmes, as well as enact more general macroeconomic policies that create new opportunities for employment. My contribution is important not only because it helps us to resolve a series of urgent policy disputes—disputes that have been discussed extensively by labour market economists and policymakers, but less so by political philosophers—but also because my analysis sheds light on more general philosophical controversies relating to risk.

Digital technologies shaping the nature and routine intensity of shopfloor work

Drawing on data from Hungarian manufacturing companies, this paper aims to explore the ways in which digital technologies affect the nature and routineness of work. It concludes that digital technologies impinge on some defining features of occupations, such as workload and intensity of work; the degree to which the tasks can be explicitly defined, measured and codified; composition and amount of skills required for task execution; and the importance of experience or tacit knowledge for task execution. Non-technological factors, such as managerial approach to technology and work design moderate outcomes. Evidence indicates that a reduction in the routine content of job tasks applies only to relatively skilled employees. For low-skilled employees, certain digital assistance solutions increase routine and engender deskilling. We conclude that a qualitative enrichment of shopfloor work becomes apparent only if (1) employees are skilled enough to become upskilled – and thus engaged not only in digitally enabled but also in digitally augmented, high-value activities; (2) employees’ work tasks are reorganised, work design and work practices modified, and employees upskilled. Without appropriate managerial interventions envisaging the augmentation of work, digital technology implementation entails deskilling and/or technological unemployment, rather than providing richer dimensions to shopfloor work.

Does digital finance reduce the employment in the finance industry? Evidence from China

Finance has long been a popular major in college education, but the development of digital finance raises the concern about job losses in the finance industry. Using novel panel datasets from China, we document robust city-level evidence that digital finance significantly reduces the employment in the finance industry. Moreover, we find that the labor efficiency in the finance industry increases with the intensity of digital finance, which supports the argument of technological unemployment. Our analysis suggests that more attention should be paid to the potential unbalance between the labor demand and supply in the finance industry.

Robots and unions: The moderating effect of organized labour on technological unemployment

This study analyses the moderating effect of union density on industrial employment and unemployment in advanced economies facing exposure to industrial robots. Applying random effects within-between regression models to a pseudo-panel of observations from 27 European countries and the United States over 1998–2019, the study finds that higher union density is associated with a greater decline in industry-sector employment for younger workers and workers with lower secondary education when robot exposure increases. It is also found that the unemployment rate declines more strongly in countries with low union density when robot exposure increases. These findings suggest that exposure to industrial robots promotes labour market dualization in strongly unionized countries, whereas workers with tertiary education and labour market tenure are the main beneficiaries from technological change.

The Impact of E-Commerce on the Labor Market

E-commerce is one of the industrial sectors created as a result of technological progress, and has created new jobs for the economy. However, this sector is conditioned not only by the level of digitalization of each state, but also by the speed of integration of technology in the business environment. The main purpose of the article is to present the impact of e-Commerce development on the labor market. It also considers impact on the labor market of human capital with advanced technological skills. It focuses on data from a particular period situated between two major crises (the economic crisis of 2008 and the health crisis of 2020). We want to know to what extent a technology-created sector can compensate for technological unemployment. To test the working hypothesis, we developed a panel regression model for a sample of 28 European states. The results indicate that 99.5% of the variation in the labor market activity rate of people aged 15 to 64 years in the selected sample of states is explained by the model. This confirms that the development of e-Commerce and an increase in the percentage of technology-specialized human resources contribute to the increase in activity rate in the labor market. As a result, the labor market must be assisted in keeping up with technology by restructuring the education system, or introducing courses that maintain competitiveness and continuous development.

Technological change and unemployment nexus from a gender perspective: empirical evidence from a panel cointegration approach

This study investigates the long-run relationship between technological change and unemployment, focusing on a gender perspective in developed economies. Considering the obstacles women face in accessing labor markets, this study aims to empirically combine the technological change and unemployment nexus with a gender perspective in 20 OECD economies from 1985 to 2019 by using multifactor productivity (MFP) as a proxy for technological change. The findings from Westerlund Panel Cointegration Test and Pedroni's Panel-Dynamic Ordinary Least-Squares (PDOLS) estimator indicate the presence of a long-run relationship between MFP and unemployment rate with diversified gender effects. Even though MFP affects total and male unemployment significantly and negatively in the long run, there is no significant effect on female unemployment for the whole panel. However, the findings by economies are diversified and they indicate the presence of technological unemployment for women in some economies. Thus, the empirical results clearly show that the long-run relationship between MFP and unemployment is affected by gender differences.

Technological Unemployment in the Perspective of Industry 4.0

The article concerns the problem of technological unemployment in the perspective of industry 4.0 development. The purpose of the article is to indicate the positive and negative effects of industry 4.0 development and to define the ways of programming education as a way to counteract the negative effects of industry 4.0 development. The author emphasizes the need for an appropriate education curriculum, aimed at acquiring both professional and engineering competences as well as humanistic, ethical and social competences at the same time. Technological unemployment is defined as a temporary, short-term phenomenon, lasting until human capital is shifted to other applications. The lack of adequate education, including lifelong learning, creates a risk of transition from technological unemployment to structural unemployment, which is much more dangerous for economic and social reasons. The article, therefore, contains an analysis of the labor market in terms of the demand for specific competences in the perspective of industry 4.0 development and forecasts of the demand for competences of the future. There is no doubt that the development of industry 4.0 requires specialized competences combining the skills of an IT specialist and an automation / robotics specialist who has skills in the field of cyber-physical systems integration, operation of advanced production management systems and complex production data analysis systems as well as the application of artificial intelligence algorithms in the production space. At the same time, however, specialists with high communication, interpersonal and social competences will be sought, hence there is a need for appropriate education curriculum.

The attitudes of young citizens in higher education towards universal basic income in the context of automation—A qualitative study

AbstractOne of the primary reasons for introducing the discussion about universal basic income (UBI) into political debate was to understand whether UBI could serve a good response to the negative consequences of technology‐driven job replacement. It is also a question whether citizens would accept UBI. Based on 30 interviews with Hungarian university students, we investigate the attitudes of young citizens to the introduction of UBI in a hypothetical scenario, situated in 2060, when technological unemployment is high. Interviewees expressed optimistic views about the future labour market and dismissed the scenario, preferring the option of job‐creation. Students claimed that people would become useless members of society by not working, which argument echoes the Hungarian government's discourse about the need for work‐based society. Students also stressed that work gives meaning to life. These narratives show a traditional understanding of work that might inhibit advocates from increasing social support for UBI.

Digitalisation and AI what does the Future Hold for Labour Union

The Covid-19 problem has hastened a pace of significant digitalization in economic production and services that had already begun. For the first time, AI and robotics are becoming autonomous and self-learning, with human-like capabilities. The need to examine digitalization and the future of work has grown even more urgent. Until recently, labour unions were the most powerful institutions representing workers. However, the increasing prospect of intelligent robots replacing humans calls into doubt the viability of labour union policy. This development jeopardises their conventional power bases, which rely on the participation of large numbers of salaried workers and their ability to halt production. This paper tries to analyse the issues that unions face in capitalist democracies in this setting. The premise that the digital revolution will eventually generate new, better jobs has been endorsed by the majority of research work on labour relations. We propose that we investigate an alternate scenario, namely, a digital revolution that results in mass human worker replacement and structural, technological unemployment, which could broaden our perspective, particularly in terms of public policy design. We believe that labour unions now play two critical roles. The first is to protect workers’ rights and interests as the economy shifts from paid labour to automated-autonomous production; and the second is to change their primary mission from representing employees to representing the social rights of all citizens, particularly the material interests of laypeople.

The artist and the automaton in digital game production

This article analyses discourses around procedural content generation (PCG) as automation of creativity in the games industry. PCG refers to techniques for creating game content algorithmically, by manipulating data through sets of computational operations and parameters. By producing scalable results with combinatorial diversity, procedural generation is touted as the future of content, yet flouted as the harbinger of technological unemployment in game art production. Critical scholarship on automation suggests that the real danger is not job loss per se, but the constitution of an underclass of artists whose vital work of conditioning algorithmic outputs is denigrated as derivative and ‘manual’. Framed by liberal humanist ideas of agency, PCG naturalizes trade-offs where the autonomy of generative machines is contingent upon the automatism of its human conditioners. This qualitative analyses of talks on PCG at the Game Developers Conference (2015–2020) shows how procedural systems bifurcate the creative work of algorithmic cultural production into affective and mechanical forms of conditioning that map onto stratifications of racial capitalism. Affective tuning resists documentation and is reserved for artists with technomasculine forms of cultural capital; mechanical tuning is relegated to automatable and outsourced labour and relies on replicable technique that is considered artistic but not creative. This article argues that PCG’s reclassification of creativity through racialised dialectics of human agency and machine automaticity overlooks the autonomy of procedural systems. PCG pipelines are organised less around the agency of human toolmakers and more around the autonomy of systems that assimilate tasks in the management of complex networks of dependencies. Instead of pitting artists against machines, this analysis politicises automation’s racial stratifications by examining the momentum of more-than-human systems in which toolmakers and tool users negotiate granularities of control and degrees of concession.

Social Interaction, Envy, and the Basic Income: Do Remedies to Technological Unemployment Reduce Well-being?

AbstractThe present article aims to utilize some insights from behavioral and happiness economics to discuss the consequences that the introduction of an unconditional basic income to cope with technological unemployment may hold for well-being. The impact of 21st-century technological progress on employment has only just begun to make itself felt and it will take time to realize its full extent. However, the main innovation is already common knowledge: robots (and artificial intelligence) are finding their way into the production process. According to several recent (although controversial) contributions, the phenomenon is radically different from past technological revolutions and could generate high levels of unemployment, calling for innovative redistributive public policies. The present article, building on Keynes’ (1930) short essay (“Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren”) and referring to some of the principles and models of behavioral and happiness economics, focuses on the best-known of these policies, namely provision of an unconditional basic income. A series of factors – loss aversion and hedonic adaptation, the impossibility of escalating to higher-grade consumption behaviors, social interaction in the form of active and passive envy, loss of self-esteem and social stigma – are all likely to have a negative impact on well-being if an unconditional basic income that remains unchanging over time is implemented. A policy mix combining a rising basic income with other measures is therefore proposed.

Technological unemployment – who is afraid of losing their job to a robot?

Objective: The study aimed to identify, analyse and assess the mood regarding the possibility of employees losing their jobs and being replaced with robots and regarding methods of preventing technological unemployment. Methodology: In March 2021, an online survey of a group of economically active adults in Poland (N=158) was carried out. Using the Internet, the standardised survey was addressed to people selected by the author. Results: The research has shown that employees are not afraid of losing their jobs, yet almost 90% of respondents plan to increase their competencies. People in managerial positions focus on developing cognitive and social competencies, while people in other positions plan to develop technical competencies. Research limitations: The research did not include unemployed and digitally excluded people. The research sample was selected by the author. Therefore, we do not extrapolate the results to the general public. Practical implications: The study shows that employees do not yet fully perceive the problem of technological unemployment. However, when planning their development, they learn independently or choose courses. Low interest in developing competencies in studies may signal that universities should make changes in their pedagogical offering. Novelty: Most research in the field of technological unemployment deals with the description of a business phenomenon or perspective. There is relatively little research on attitudes and reactions of human capital to the phenomenon of technological unemployment. Keywords: technological unemployment, competencies, human capital, Industry 4.0Classification:research paper

Применение технологий искусственного интеллекта и робототехники в сельском хозяйстве и оценка их влияния на безработицу на сельских территориях

The growth of technological unemployment in the context of the massive use of robots and artificial intelligence is an urgent practice and scientific problem. The purpose of the study is to assess the impact of the use of artificial intelligence technologies and robotics on unemployment in agriculture. As research methods, screening of scientific literature on this issue and questioning of the expert group are used. The analysis and grouping of various scientific approaches to assessing the impact of artificial intelligence technologies and robotics on technological unemployment has been carried out. According to experts, the use of artificial intelligence and robotics technologies in agriculture will cause a cardinal impact on the industry (56.6% and 58.9%, respectively). At the same time, experts assess the possible increase in unemployment in rural areas as a result of the use of these technologies as insignificant (55.3% and 59.6% of all estimates). Specific recommendations are given to reduce the impact of the use of artificial intelligence technologies and robotics on technological unemployment, which consist in the need to improve the skills of workers, acquire unique skills for them, and create effective trade union organizations.

The Fight against Technological Unemployment. Analysis of Subnational Cases in Mexico

This paper studies the risk of technological unemployment in Mexico, both at the national level and in two states: Querétaro (QRO) and San Luis Potosí (SLP). Using the methodology of Frey and Osborne (2013) adapted to the INEGI’s National Occupations System, it was found that both QRO (51%) and SLP (57%) are below the national average (67%) in terms of technological unemployment risk. However, the situation changes when analyzing some strategic sectors in QRO, such as food with an average unemployment rate of 84%, automotive with 75% and household appliances with 92%. The same occurs in SLP, where the food sector reaches 95% and the automotive sector 93%. Therefore, this phenomenon cannot be analyzed only from a national or state perspective, a sectoral look is also required. In addition, it was found that the probability of being at high risk is higher for women, younger age groups, and people with lower levels of education on average. Finally, it was identified that for all the sectors studied, the great mass of people at high risk is found in the middle schooling segments. This could be interpreted as an imminent polarization of employment, which would imply the concentration of the employed at the extremes, in terms of skills, with a gradual disappearance of the segments in the middle. The question remains open: What public policy agenda should Latin American countries deploy in this area?

Robots and Unions: The Moderating Effect of Organised Labour on Technological Unemployment

Robots and Unions: The Moderating Effect of Organised Labour on Technological Unemployment

Three decades of research on innovation and inequality: Causal scenarios, explanatory factors and suggestions

Prompted by rising income inequality (in short, inequality) in advanced economies, a rapidly growing number of studies across various fields and disciplines of social science have, since the 1990s, sought to find out how innovation (as the main engine of economic progress) affects the distribution of income in modern-day capitalist societies. Using the systematic literature review method, this paper provides the first critical review of 166 studies on innovation and inequality published in 114 journals in the last three decades (1990–2019). It is shown that, while the great majority of studies under review concur that innovation induces inequality, this finding is subject to the disciplinary origins of research (e.g., development studies, economics, geography, innovation studies, etc.) and the country under investigation. Furthermore, guided by an original causally holistic analytical framework, the analysis demonstrates that the relationship between innovation and inequality is significantly more causally complex than the most popular theoretical perspective (i.e., skill-biased technological change account) has let us believe; in particular, it is subject to five causal scenarios and a range of explanatory factors (i.e., skill premiums, technological unemployment, international trade, declining union membership, spatial aspects, changing employment conditions, policy, horizontal inequalities, sectoral composition and types of innovation). The paper ends by discussing findings, policy implications and knowledge gaps, one of which concerns the following under-researched question: how, and under what conditions do publicly funded innovation policies reduce (or increase) inequality?

Automation, Unemployment, and Taxation

Automation can bring the risk of technological unemployment, as employees are replaced by machines that can carry out the same or similar work at a fraction of the cost. Some believe that the appropriate response is to tax automation. In this paper, I explore the justifiability of view, maintaining that we can embrace automation so long as we compensate those employees whose livelihoods are destroyed by this process by creating new opportunities for employment. My contribution in this paper is important not only because I develop a theoretical framework that we can use to resolve this urgent policy dispute—a dispute that has been discussed extensively by labour economists, tax lawyers, and policymakers, but largely neglected by political philosophers—but also because my analysis sheds lights on a wider range of controversies relating to the moral and political importance of unemployment.

The Computer Metaphor. Anchoring the Fear of Human Obsolescence(s) since the 20th Century

This article shows how fundamental debates on both human obsolescence in the form of vanishing human exceptionalism and of technological unem- ployment were anchored to the emerging technology of artificial intelligence (AI). Through this anchoring, these debates became tangible and they were discussed beyond scientific circles by the wider public too. Thus the technol­ ogy on the one hand and the scientific and social debates on human obsoles­ cence on the other hand entered into a phase of co­evolution. We will first discuss the computer metaphor since it not only prepared the idea of AI but also was the culture medium for the connection between the technology and the obsolescence debates. In the second half of the article, we then discuss this connection in the context of human exceptionalism, followed by the context of technological unemployment. Next to prominent examples from Anglo-American AI research as well as cybernetics and psychology we look at German-language examples. That the spread of the anchoring of debate to technology goes beyond scientific circles is made clear by looking at science fiction and broadsheet newspapers and magazines.

THE CONCEPT OF BASIC INCOME IN THE BRITISH POLITIAL CONTEXT

The article explores the current debate on basic income in the UK. The growing interest in this concept, which implies the introduction of unconditional and equal for all regular cash payments, is caused by problems common to Western European countries, i.e. an increase in income inequality, the risk of technological unemployment, as well as the need to take urgent measures to support the population at times of pandemic. In the British context, however, ideological and political factors play a significant role, such as a rich intellectual tradition of developing universal approaches to social security and the desire of a number of parties, both national and regional, to use this increasingly popular concept for their own political purposes. It is concluded that in the medium term, the UK's transition to basic income is unlikely, but the very discussion on its introduction can serve as a catalyst for serious social transformations.

Моделирование влияния цифровых технологий на уровень безработицы в России

The paper examines labor market patterns in the light of digital economy development. The aim is to analyze labor market conjuncture in terms of registered unemployment dynamics. The degree of digital economy development is assessed through three indicators: the share of organizations using (1) the Internet, (2) local area networks, (3) number of personal computers per 100 employees. In addition to technological development indicators, the article also makes account of certain demographic factors. Since early 2000s, the degree of Internet penetration in organizations has doubled, while the number of computers increased threefold. The share of elderly population and life expectancy rate have increased by 5 percent and 7 years respectively. Drawing on econometric panel data models regarding federal districts in Russia for 2003–2019, the author provides the following findings. First, the proliferation of technological advances reduces unemployment rate. Second, an increase in the proportion of population above working age and life expectancy entails the reduction in unemployment rate. Third, combined effect of technological and demographic factors increases unemployment rate. The magnitude of the reduction exceeds the degree of increase in the unemployment rate due to technological advances. Thus, technological unemployment is more likely a theoretical possibility. Fourth, the determinants taken into consideration explain from 38 to 43 percent of unemployment rate change. The proposed approach can be applied in designing regulatory policies regarding employment with regard to the implementation of digital technologies in organizations and population aging in Russia’s regions.