There's an Automation Crisis Underway Right Now, It's Just Mostly Invisible

merbs writes: Economists examined how automation events impacted millions of employees in the Netherlands between 2000 and 2016. They measured daily and annual wages, employment rates, the collection of unemployment insurance and welfare receipts. What emerges is a portrait of workplace automation that is ominous in a less dramatic manner than we’re typically made to understand. For one thing, there is no ‘robot apocalypse’, even after a major corporate automation event. Unlike mass layoffs, automation does not appear to immediately and directly send workers packing en masse.

Instead, automation increases the likelihood that workers will be driven away from their previous jobs at the companies—whether they’re fired, or moved to less rewarding tasks, or quit—and causes a long-term loss of wages for the employee. Older workers are more likely to retire early. Researchers also find that workers receive insufficient support from state benefits—even in a place where benefits are relatively generous. It all amounts to a slow-motion picture of the automation crisis.