Jobs of the Future and Idiocracy

The Economist magazine recently tried to identify where America’s job growth will come from. Of course, pessimists are always seeing the opposite, afraid that advancing technology will put people out of work – starting with the 19^th century Luddites, who campaigned against factory automation – and could not have foreseen the explosion of new jobs that technologies like railways, telegraphy, and electrification would soon bring.

So using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Economist presented the job categories that should see the highest growth rates in the years ahead, to 2024. Now, America, judging from current politics, is fixated upon old-time factory jobs (like Carrier’s). But here’s what struck me from that Economist article. It’s not just that such factory jobs aren’t in it. Of course not. However, I asked myself whether the kinds of people who did such factory jobs can switch into these other professions. I don’t think so.

Well, maybe for one or two of the 16 shown, like “ambulance drivers.” Though even that may overlook the advance of self-driving technology.

The top job growth category is “wind turbine service technicians,” reflecting increasing emphasis on alternative energy technologies. But most of the list reflects a different trend: aging populations, and the panoply of services they’ll require. And, as The Economist notes, “[t]hese are all tasks that require empathy and social skills.”

Again – not the métier of America’s army of less educated assembly line jockeys. They’re yesterday’s men.

The Economist’s writer also points out that the analysis doesn’t take into account job categories that don’t exist yet. Some will be related to technologies that are just emerging, like virtual reality and drones. He notes that his 16-year-old daughter wants to be a robopsychologist (who figures out why robots are misbehaving). Such jobs don’t exist now, but probably will soon. And then there are all the future jobs we can’t even conceive of today.

A lifeline for all those yesterday men? Not a chance. Yet we’re still producing such people. Our educational system still spits out a sizeable cohort of folks without even a high school diploma. Some can do those remnants of low skill jobs that aren’t automated away. Many though have to be supported by the productive population, in one way or another; the “disability” system covers a lot of people whose “disability” is really just being useless.

The movie Idiocracy (one of those dystopian-future flicks) began by contrasting two families. A highly educated, brainy couple agonize over having even a single child. While a bunch of doofuses pops them out right and left. Result, after multiple generations: a nation of doofuses. Apparently everyone is supported somehow because technology dispenses with a need for human work. Not very realistic.

The fact is that, to support all our yesterday’s men (and women) we’ll need a lot of tomorrow people, capable of doing the tomorrow jobs that the former cannot. And Idiocracy wasn’t entirely cuckoo in highlighting that advanced modern populations are not reproducing themselves. So where will we get the tomorrow people we need? Immigration.

Indeed, a key reason why America’s economy has been more dynamic than Europe’s is our greater ability to assimilate immigrants. They fill the gaps our own natives cannot. Our schools don’t produce enough Americans to do all the high tech and skilled service jobs; a lot of them are done by immigrants (especially from Asia).

The idea that other countries send us losers and scroungers is stupid. People willing to uproot themselves and start fresh in a new and unfamiliar environment are, to the contrary, full of the kind of enterprise and drive we need.

America’s fixation on manufacturing jobs – and its growing hostility toward immigration – are a double whammy of, well, idiocracy.