While automation is not new to many industries, such as auto, it’s occurring at a faster pace now and spreading across many industries. Its benefits have been touted as a way to increase productivity, overcome worker shortage and to eliminate routine jobs placing employees in higher value jobs. And of course, the downside is that jobs can be outright eliminated as robots move in.

A new paper authored by law firm Littler Mendelson P.C. takes the viewpoint that “ technology eliminates jobs, not work. It is the continuous obligation of economic policy to match increases in productive potential with increases in purchasing power and demand. Otherwise, the potential created by technical progress runs to waste in idle capacity, unemployment, and deprivation.”

And it is the progress of this technology-induced displacement of employees (hereinafter, “TIDE”) that is unstoppable and therefore must be dealt with in a strategic manner, the report concludes.

The report notes the following:

The accelerating pace of automation will likely lead to productivity increases on a scale not seen since the Industrial Revolution, while displacing tens of millions of American workers from their current occupations. Too often, news reports dramatically focus on AI and robots as job killers. Unfortunately, the debate over whether jobs eliminated will outnumber jobs created ignores two related and no less important questions: (1) With the fast-paced arrival of innovative and transformative technologies, will workers whose jobs are most likely to be disrupted have the skills and training required for the new jobs being created? (2) Will employers be able to fill existing vacancies as this unstoppable transformation occurs?

The authors expect the following large-scale trends:

• In the medium- to long-term, productivity increases should lower costs for consumers and spur greater demand for labor across the economy as a whole.

• In the short-term, automation will displace many affected workers from their current jobs and force hundreds of millions of workers worldwide to transition to new occupations within the next 15 years.

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