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What will happen when all the low skill jobs are gone?

eeguy

So Enda Kenny came under fire for calling the people of Castlebar whiners when they said there was no recovery in the west of Ireland.
Castlebar has had a series of factory closures since 2008 and the service industry has suffered too as a result.
Up and down Ireland (and the UK), factories in small towns are closing and will never be replaced. Any factories that have opened in recent years are in or around cities and are heavily automated, having only a small core staff to maintain production.
In the next 2 decades automation is going to really take off replacing traditional low skill jobs in manufacturing, transport and retail.

So what happens when thousands are made redundant through automation?
What happens when anyone who drives or does any repetitive task is made unemployable as it's cheaper and more efficient to automate the process?
Is it the end of civilisation as we know it?

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SEPT 23 1989

Skatedude wrote: »

People said exactly the same thing with the invention of the steam engine.

Building and maintaining railways worldwide since the invention of steam was labour intensive giving millions of jobs for a over a century

JRant

eeguy wrote: »

That's true, but machines are becoming more capable at replicating repetitious actions that previously only people could do.

Also, it doesn't take many people to program an entire factory and once that factory is going, it doesn't take many people to maintain it.

And all the people in the production chain have specialised qualifications that take years to attain.

Very true and it brings into question why we are offering incentives for the likes of Apple to set up data centres in the west when you'd be hard pressed to find a less labour intensive industry.

That money would be far better spent helping local start ups. It seems though that a photo op with a few head honchos from the States trumps real solutions.

gctest50

eeguy wrote: »

That's true, but machines are becoming more capable at replicating repetitious actions that previously only people could do. ..........

and more :

mahoganygas

eeguy wrote: »

In the next 2 decades automation is going to really take off replacing traditional low skill jobs in manufacturing, transport and retail.

So what happens when thousands are made redundant through automation?
What happens when anyone who drives or does any repetitive task is made unemployable as it's cheaper and more efficient to automate the process?

The writing has been on the wall since the 70's.
Ireland was never going to be a manufacturing economy. Everybody knew this.
Anybody who started working in a factory 20 years ago and expected to have similar job options now was delusional.

Upskill. Don't sit around and wait for the state to magic up work for you.
A Job for life is an illusion.

The Randy Riverbeast

New jobs will be created. Eventually we may get to a point where basic income is introduced so people can afford to become qualified in an area or help the homeless.

Speedwell

mahoganygas wrote: »

The writing has been on the wall since the 70's.
Ireland was never going to be a manufacturing economy. Everybody knew this.
Anybody who started working in a factory 20 years ago and expected to have similar job options now was delusional.

Upskill. Don't sit around and wait for the state to magic up work for you.
A Job for life is an illusion.

20 years ago I worked in a studio making stained glass windows by hand in the American South. The Mexican industry replaced me (and they deserved to, I'm not complaining, I helped train a few of the Mexican immigrants myself). Today I work from home in a middle-level IT job after moving up through the ranks from "data entry". My husband worked in factories 20 years ago, and rose to a supervisory rank, and then the Irish downturn hit him and he lost his job. Today he is studying to be a chef. Neither of us are doing what we thought we'd be doing, if you'd asked us 20 years ago. Neither of us are doing our "dream job". But we are doing OK and the bills are getting paid, and that is a great feeling.

FalconGirl

A project I'm on now is automating processes that will result in the loss of about 50-60 jobs. The poor craythurs know it too but the writings have been on the wall for the last few years. Anytime I'm out in the field doing my analysis I always hear the snide auld "coming to take our jobs comment" out of some of them making it incredibly difficult at times.

Feel like saying "yes I am and what are you going to do about it?" Half them know it and are too lazy to upskill.

I do fear for society as a whole that savings made by automation will not reach the less well off and as corporations become wealthier more people will become unemployed and fall into poverty.

Speedwell

FalconGirl wrote: »

A project I'm on now is automating processes that will result in the loss of about 50-60 jobs. The poor craythurs know it too but the writings have been on the wall for the last few years. Anytime I'm out in the field doing my analysis I always hear the snide auld "coming to take our jobs comment" out of some of them making it incredibly difficult at times.

Feel like saying "yes I am and what are you going to do about it?" Half them know it and are too lazy to upskill.

Lazy /= scared to step out of their comfort zone. The walls around that comfort zone are made of "the way we've always done it" and cemented with "we don't know how to do it any other way". And they're often topped by the concertina wire of "no good alternatives" and the observation towers of "how are we going to get by while we upskill".

In the US, where social welfare is a joke, many low-skill workers literally can't upskill because they are too busy working two jobs to make ends meet, or don't have predictable schedules that would allow them to take a class, or can't scrape the money together to take a class, or wouldn't have enough to eat if they had to quit their jobs to get training, or... you get the picture.

ScumLord

The thing about automation is that it only makes sense on large production runs. So it's great for making a billion iPhones but not so good at making an off size gate for your driveway.

But automation is getting cheaper to the point its found a place in smaller production runs but at that level it's a tool, like your milling machine or bandsaw, it just does more steps. It still needs someone to tell it what to do.

The major change in the future will be that all these really advanced production techniques normally the reserve of international corporations will become accessible to way more people. A CNC milling machine is now pretty affordable.

I can see large scale production of things falling by the wayside as one off bespoke products take their place. Either you'll go to a small business and buy something they've produced that would cost a fortune today but is made much more accessible due to automated systems like 3D printing. Or design something yourself and bring it to your local engineering company who'll manufacture it for you at about the same price you'd pay for an affordable high end product today.

So as much as it could kill the factory floor job it could create a whole new way of of producing and buying products.

gctest50

ScumLord wrote: »

The thing about automation is that it only makes sense on large production runs. So it's great for making a billion iPhones but not so good at making an off size gate for your driveway.
........

getting there :

Self programming assembly cell for structural steel, no setup

edbrez

Most real low skilled jobs have already gone for new entrants - fishing, farming, mining.

SEPT 23 1989

FalconGirl wrote: »

A project I'm on now is automating processes that will result in the loss of about 50-60 jobs. The poor craythurs know it too but the writings have been on the wall for the last few years. Anytime I'm out in the field doing my analysis I always hear the snide auld "coming to take our jobs comment" out of some of them making it incredibly difficult at times.

Feel like saying "yes I am and what are you going to do about it?" Half them know it and are too lazy to upskill.

I do fear for society as a whole that savings made by automation will not reach the less well off and as corporations become wealthier more people will become unemployed and fall into poverty.

Hopefully you are working for Transdev

eeguy

FalconGirl wrote: »

A project I'm on now is automating processes that will result in the loss of about 50-60 jobs. The poor craythurs know it too but the writings have been on the wall for the last few years. Anytime I'm out in the field doing my analysis I always hear the snide auld "coming to take our jobs comment" out of some of them making it incredibly difficult at times.

I'm doing something similar. I get the same comment but my argument is that it's better to automate a few people out of jobs than watch the whole company fold. Besides, automation can grow a company and pave the way for more high paying professional jobs which is all around better for the company and the local community.

SEPT 23 1989 wrote: »

Hopefully you are working for Transdev

They're high on list. In 50 years people will think we were crazy to ever let a person drive.

beach_walker

FalconGirl wrote: »

A project I'm on now is automating processes that will result in the loss of about 50-60 jobs.

I worked on a project once kinda similar* once, basically (I'm in software) we had a huge QA team which took a long time to do a full manual regression test for every release/iteration. The product was not designed with automated tests in mind so a team of us were sent off for months to put such a system in place. It took a while but we got there. What used to happen once every few weeks, which involved 15+ QAs around a week to go through was then ran every single night (or as often as we wanted) in no time. The quality of the product went through the roof but I did feel a bit bad...

*most of the QAs had to retrain into pseudo-dev roles. They were disproportionally hit a few months later when we were laying off people.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

beach_walker

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

And also ask why are they breaking the campaigning moratorium :pac:

I do think that the inevitable increasing automation will be a great thing for humanity, it might just be a bit rough getting the balance right.

Speedwell

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Speaking to the thought and not to the person (sorry, this is not an attack and I'm not arguing per se)...

The claim that a higher minimum wage increases unemployment is facile and somewhat intuitive, but not all things that are easy and obvious are in fact true. When the minimum wage was set in the US to begin with, it was set at a level that was expected to actually provide modestly for the basic needs of working-class people. That is what a minimum wage is for. Any rise in the minimum wage is characterized as a tax or burden or punishment for business, when in fact a business not paying the minimum wage is getting a free ride and engaging in labor theft.

Yes. I used to be a US "Libertarian" once. The issue that turned me around was the minimum wage, along with access to healthcare, and the idea that turned me around was that people ought not to be slaves and sick. The reason we even have societies is to work together to make the lives of its members better than individual effort can accomplish. If a person's full-time work can't suffice to earn them a life of safety and decency, if a society enables the wastefully over-comfortable to treat people like commodities, then it isn't much of a society and the working people are being effectively owned. Don't like Communism? Then don't support exploitation.

Innovation, automation, education... these three things; the engineer, the teacher, and the Internet communicator... these three people; frugality, magnanimity, and willingness to admit a mistake and to learn from reality... these three virtues, are the things that are going to lead us forward as a good society into the future. I hope.

[Deleted User]

Our elderly and our children will still need looking after...

Ray Palmer

beach_walker wrote: »

I worked on a project once kinda similar* once, basically (I'm in software) we had a huge QA team which took a long time to do a full manual regression test for every release/iteration. The product was not designed with automated tests in mind so a team of us were sent off for months to put such a system in place. It took a while but we got there. What used to happen once every few weeks, which involved 15+ QAs around a week to go through was then ran every single night (or as often as we wanted) in no time. The quality of the product went through the roof but I did feel a bit bad...

*most of the QAs had to retrain into pseudo-dev roles. They were disproportionally hit a few months later when we were laying off people.

I happen to work in QA and automation testing has been going on for years. What was seen as a great way of saving time has proven not to be. The maintenance of them is so high in costs and time that they often don't work. For it to work here has to be so much coordination of people and processes that it fails all the time. The automation tests generally only aid in repeating a test that probably would never be repeated anyway. There isn't a vast improvement of quality and it can even go down due to false assumptions the tests past.
It normally doesn't reduce QA teams but big projects do take in people and then dump them but that applies to the whole development team. That is why contracting works so well in IT. A company can take in people and doesn't have to keep them once they finish the project.
The things is as technology moved on people who would have done admin type jobs were reduced in theory but that is not quite what happened. Some went in maintaining the software and hardware and the IT industry was created. Mean while the ability to get better information was created so admin jobs became more complex and numbers increased again. There is more data than there was before and it is being used.
IT is being automated too with the likes of things like SquareSpace. It really has eliminated lots of small scale web designers but it has also increased the number of web pages. Some people are even now offering services to design a web page using it.

Hrududu

Ray Palmer wrote: »

I happen to work in QA and automation testing has been going on for years. What was seen as a great way of saving time has proven not to be. The maintenance of them is so high in costs and time that they often don't work. For it to work here has to be so much coordination of people and processes that it fails all the time. The automation tests generally only aid in repeating a test that probably would never be repeated anyway. There isn't a vast improvement of quality and it can even go down due to false assumptions the tests past.

Automation in QA done right eliminates the need for the repetitive regression testing. But too often its not done right. Which increases the amount of maintenance needed on the tests. We've eliminated a huge portion of tests that had to be run manually by automating them. The only maintenance they need is when the application itself changes and the tests need to change accordingly.

But I've also been on projects where the standard of the tests was poor. The people writing them didn't have the skills to make them as solid as they could be and were very reluctant to upskill so that they could make them better.

Ray Palmer

Hrududu wrote: »

Automation in QA done right eliminates the need for the repetitive regression testing. But too often its not done right. Which increases the amount of maintenance needed on the tests. We've eliminated a huge portion of tests that had to be run manually by automating them. The only maintenance they need is when the application itself changes and the tests need to change accordingly.

But I've also been on projects where the standard of the tests was poor. The people writing them didn't have the skills to make them as solid as they could be and were very reluctant to upskill so that they could make them better.

Spoken like a developer;)
I have worked in QA as a contractor for 15 years in multiple companies. All have had some level of automation. It does not work in a real sense. Software is constantly changing so they have to be heavily maintained. The developers have to inform you of ALL of their changes. They don't and tests fail, then you spend time fixing said test which normally takes longer than it would have taken to manually run them. The tests can take as long to develop as the original code in many cases.
Then the big one is that fact automated tests can't even do certain functions at all. You can automated to certain points then manually do a bit then back to automation again with this being repeated.
Some tools will also give a positive result when the test should fail.
There can be logical reasons for all of this and it can be managed but the time and money make it very cumbersome. Being able to repeat 100 examples sounds great but hey are all the same if there are 20 variants you may need to write 20 automated tests. Fine until one change comes in that means you have to recode 20 tests which you wouldn't need to do with a person. Tests can completely fall apart over a simple change like font and take a long time to identify and address. No reluctance to upskill at all but the belief it will suddenly reduce testing times and costs gets shattered so quickly. I'm a contractor that specialises in come in on projects that are in danger of running over or already have. Automated tests are most effective on very stable platforms but are being used on very unstable one.

Ronaldinho

JRant wrote: »

Very true and it brings into question why we are offering incentives for the likes of Apple to set up data centres in the west when you'd be hard pressed to find a less labour intensive industry.

That money would be far better spent helping local start ups. It seems though that a photo op with a few head honchos from the States trumps real solutions.

New Facebook one will create 2000 construction jobs and 150 jobs over the long term http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/facebook-data-centre-to-generate-2-000-construction-jobs-1.2508628

Not to be sniffed at I think.

The politicians do love a good photo op

but they deserve a pat on the back for the likes of this one.

[Deleted User]

Permabear wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

Even the Economist has changed its mind on the minimum wage debate.

Wibbs

eeguy wrote: »

In 50 years people will think we were crazy to ever let a person drive.

:mad: Get out!

Pretty true though and as the west at least gets more and more risk averse in mindset I can see driving will be extremely curtailed. There was a time when only the rich could afford cars and aeroplanes and there was little training or licensing requirements for either. Hence you see quite a bit of "flying cars of the future" in scifi musings from the time. Aircraft became out of personal everyday "common man" reach rapidly enough, but cars became cheaper and cheaper and more seen as a "right". I'm quite sure if cars were invented today no way would you be allowed drive one without significantly more training and regular tests, including yearly medicals.

Speedwell wrote: »

The reason we even have societies is to work together to make the lives of its members better than individual effort can accomplish.

Jaysus SW you can't be going around saying that, you'll get the I'malrightjackists foaming at the mouth.

Speedwell

Wibbs wrote: »

Jaysus SW you can't be going around saying that, you'll get the I'malrightjackists foaming at the mouth.

Not to mention, I was typing during a phone call and my grammar appears to have been badly affected.

Wibbs

mariaalice wrote: »

Even the Economist has changed its mind on the minimum wage debate.

As has that Libertarian poster boy Hong Kong.

JRant

Ronaldinho wrote: »

New Facebook one will create 2000 construction jobs and 150 jobs over the long term http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/facebook-data-centre-to-generate-2-000-construction-jobs-1.2508628

Not to be sniffed at I think.

The politicians do love a good photo op but they deserve a pat on the back for the likes of this one.

I take your point but if you look into these developments a bit further it makes little sense to be offering such huge incentives to bring them here.

Most of the constitution work will be carried out in a short space of time.

Of those150 jobs, the majority will be security and cleaning staff ie minimum wage. It takes very few people to actually run these data centres so the amount of high skilled workers required is minimal.

Another factor is most of the materials, including; switchgear, generators, servers etc is all sourced from outside of the country so again we see little gain from it. Even the design house will most likely be based outside of Ireland as they always have a template that us used for all their facilities.

JRant

Speedwell wrote: »

Speaking to the thought and not to the person (sorry, this is not an attack and I'm not arguing per se)...

The claim that a higher minimum wage increases unemployment is facile and somewhat intuitive, but not all things that are easy and obvious are in fact true. When the minimum wage was set in the US to begin with, it was set at a level that was expected to actually provide modestly for the basic needs of working-class people. That is what a minimum wage is for. Any rise in the minimum wage is characterized as a tax or burden or punishment for business, when in fact a business not paying the minimum wage is getting a free ride and engaging in labor theft.

Yes. I used to be a US "Libertarian" once. The issue that turned me around was the minimum wage, along with access to healthcare, and the idea that turned me around was that people ought not to be slaves and sick. The reason we even have societies is to work together to make the lives of its members better than individual effort can accomplish. If a person's full-time work can't suffice to earn them a life of safety and decency, if a society enables the wastefully over-comfortable to treat people like commodities, then it isn't much of a society and the working people are being effectively owned. Don't like Communism? Then don't support exploitation.

Innovation, automation, education... these three things; the engineer, the teacher, and the Internet communicator... these three people; frugality, magnanimity, and willingness to admit a mistake and to learn from reality... these three virtues, are the things that are going to lead us forward as a good society into the future. I hope.

Excellent post.

Unfortunately, until the power of corporations is reigned in then none of those ideals will ever be met. Corporations are afforded the same rights as an individual but with none of the responsibility.

The States is a perfect example of where they have been allowed do pretty much whatever they like with no accountability. People are seen as nothing more than commodities to be used up and spat out as needed.

[Deleted User]

the_syco wrote: »

The dole?

They just need to rename and increase the income tax credit to the same amount as the dole, then we'll have a the equivalent of a basic wage for everyone. Hopefully there will be less scorn towards those on the dole then.

jimgoose

The "low skill" jobs will never be gone. There'll always be low-skill jobs, but the specific level of skill involved will change. Example: a factory operative minding a million-dollar machine in a Big Pharama plant. He's no more skilled than a 1950's farm-labourer, and certainly no less - although some would argue the farm boy has considerably more savvy. :pac: