Robots Winning War Against Humans

If you think that when the economy improves so too will your job prospects, the Captain has some sobering news for you: you're gonna have to kill a lot of robots (and more than a few foreigners) before you see any job openings.

The state's economy may begin to pick up next year, according to a forecast released Tuesday by the UCLA Anderson School of Business. But nationally, there are still millions of people whose skills are no longer needed and will have trouble finding work, according to a segment of the forecast written by Edward Leamer, director of the UCLA Anderson Forecast.

"Displaced workers are likely to have a difficult time finding jobs elsewhere partly because the jobs will remain scarce and partly because of a mismatch between the skills and abilities offered and the skills and abilities needed," he wrote.

[...]

One of the reasons for the mismatch, Leamer argues, is that robots have filled positions in manufacturing that in past recessions would have been filled by humans (an issue covered by The Times in October). Jobs that robots can't do, Leamer says, are being done overseas.

This recession should serve as a wake-up call to American workers, Leamer says:

If you have nothing to offer the job market that cannot be supplied better and cheaper by Robots, Far-away Foreigners, Recent Immigrants or Microprocessors, expect it to be exceedingly difficult to find the job to which you aspire, and plan on doing low-wage service work at the end of a long and painful road of diminished aspirations, no matter what your diploma may suggest.

[Los Angeles Times]