Exploring the mirage that automation increases unemployment

Jan. 24, 2017
Continued criticism masks the reality that thousands of manufacturing jobs remain unfilled due to a lack of people and skills.

I recently heard it repeated in several print and video formats that "automation is putting people out of work." I've seen this opinion tossed out a few times over the years, but this latest batch of a half dozen examples cropped up in just the past few weeks. I'd like to assume it's just part of the baloney wave floating in since the U.S. election, but even some respectable outlets were condemning automation with pretty much zero documentation to back up their assertions.

As a co-producer of non-fiction, my primary advice to readers is: always take everything you read with a big grain of salt and skepticism, assume there's probably more to any story, and remember that any report that seems nonsensical probably is. In short, just try get some independent confirmation about any important situation before you settle on a final opinion or decision. This procedure will likely be more useful than ever in the next few years.

Why is this? Because easy answers and prejudice are so attractive. They don't require any uncomfortable thinking. They go down so easy, just like the endlessly looping clichés and storylines on most sports or entertainment "news" shows. Simply swallow and go back to sleep. You probably won't even feel it when your health insurance, 401(k), Medicare and Social Security disappears—if they haven't already.      

For the same reasons, it's tempting to slam automation. Most importantly, this half-baked belief carries some logic with it, which adds a little credibility to firm up the illusion, until actual context arrives to blow it away. Automation, typically depicted by robots in automobile plants, does replace some of the manual tasks that people used to do.

However, these are just the latest in a long parade of labor-saving technologies that have come down the pike since forever. Software, computers and the Internet replaced calculators and adding machines. Screens replaced print, moveable type, monks/scribes and cave paintings. Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter are displacing texting, email and snail mail, which displaced "go and tell them yourself." Cars replaced horses and "walking there yourself." In the process industries, software and the Internet are replacing DCSs and PLCs, which displaced replays, pneumatics and manual controls. I'm sure everyone remembers the buggy whip example. 

I'm betting that all these innovations through history were accompanied by critics and naysayers, who first said they wouldn't work, and then bellyached that "they took our jobs." This view typically ignores all the new jobs that new industries create because no one wants to wake up, turn off autopilot and learn new skills for new settings. Heck, I don't even like putting the credit card chip in instead of swiping.

The reality is that tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of jobs in all forms of automation and control in the process and discrete industries they serve have gone begging and unfilled for years because companies can't find the skilled employees to do them. Many are willing to train good candidates for free or close to it in in-house programs or in partnerships with local community colleges. Granted, some firms use claimed worker scarcity to sit on cash and not invest, but many more companies genuinely need people. My cover article, "Spring Chickens," Sept. '14, p. 34 detailed many of these efforts.   

All that's missing is a little get up and go. And that's the real problem, and the reason for the disconnect between the mirage that automation increases unemployment and the truth that automation creates jobs that require learning new skills. Of course, education and change always come with some difficulty and lean times, which eventually give way to increased prosperity. All that remains is a choice: stick with nostalgic illusion and cruel, soon-to-be-broken promises that a golden past can return, or learn what we really need to survive in the future and jump in. 

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About the Author

Jim Montague | Executive Editor

Jim Montague is executive editor of Control.