Editorial: Robots are coming for your job, maybe.

Will you be one of the ones out of work? What are you going to do about it?

Lots of people are losing their jobs to robots. There is little doubt that this is going to continue. But the assumption that it will lead to robots taking all jobs could not be further from the truth. The truth is, there is a shortage of people to do all the work needed in most developed countries, and that shortage is getting worse every day despite so many robots entering into play. That will continue to happen.

Simplified examples:

1.) Most welding is done inside factories and by robots. Yet the demand for people that can weld has never been higher.

2.) Most furniture is made by robotics, but skilled carpenters are still in short supply getting top dollar. There are a lot of different trades like that, and those shortages are expected to keep getting worse and the pay that they are getting to keep going up.

More robots will actually mean more need for workers, not less, just not the ones that are currently doing those jobs that the robots are going to do. You cannot have enough robots to do everything you want done. In fact, the more robots you have, the more different things you would be able to accomplish, so you have to decide which will be accomplished with them, what will be left undone, and what you need to hire someone to do for you. No matter how many robots you have, that will always be the case because the more robots you have, the more opportunities to get things done you have. Robots raise your ability to get the work done on a linear scale, but they increase your opportunities on the geometric scale. Hence, you have the need to get done more than you can in order to capitalize as best you can on what opportunities you have.

But that doesn’t change that lots of jobs are likely to get automated right out of existence on the large scale. That includes most of the jobs currently done by people in many factories and in logistics. But those same companies that had employees doing that will have other things that they need done directly or through contracts. Some of those jobs will require a lot of special skills, others not so much. A huge percentage of them are only going to be temporary, though. You will not be getting a retirement plan with them or even benefits in many cases. Those you will have to take care of yourself from your own pay more and more. What your skills are and how well you market them will determine just which of those jobs are available to you and how much you will get for them.

The very jobs that were the most unionizeable, factory and warehouse work not dependent on having highly specialized skills, will be the ones most likely to be automated first. Even fast-food jobs is going to decrease as robots are now doing effective jobs at even that. Someone else isn’t going to see to it you are getting a good paycheck. That, more and more, will have to be something you are going to need to see to yourself. The work and the money will be there, but you have to look ahead to what skills you need and see about getting them. There is always going to be a shortage of enough skilled labor to meet demand, but not every skill needed now is going to be in demand later. The job market will change, and you are going to need to change with it. The demand for skilled labor is going to go up, if they are the right skills.

But which ones will be the right ones, is the question; and how bad off will you be if you have the wrong skill set? Only time will tell.

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