Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Gina Heeb — There's a 'blue-collar wave' taking place in America — but it may not last

  • Firms are having a more difficult time finding blue-collar workers than white-collar workers.
  • The shortage is expected to continue to put upward pressure on wages for blue-collared workers.
  • But economists say a tight labor market could incentivize companies to shift toward automation in attempt to reduce costs, lessening the demand for manual labor.
Business Insider
There's a 'blue-collar wave' taking place in America — but it may not last
Gina Heeb

4 comments:

Andrew Anderson said...

But economists say a tight labor market could incentivize companies to shift toward automation in attempt to reduce costs, lessening the demand for manual labor.

Which highlights the stupidity of focusing on wages instead of ethical finance since the latter would have precluded such things as workers being dis-employed with what is, in essence, their own legally stolen purchasing power and investment potential.

Ralph Musgrave said...

"a tight labor market could incentivize companies to shift toward automation in attempt to reduce costs, lessening the demand for manual labor."

Depends on the blue collar to white collar ratio in the firms that make the "automation equipment". For example those robots used on car assemly lines look very much like standard engineering products to me, in which case the blue / white ratio for the country as a whole won't change much.

Andrew Anderson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Andrew Anderson said...

Do you think robots cannot assemble robots, Ralph?

I don't know the percentage of talented programmers and engineers but it is surely tiny compared to the unemployment they can create - including the elimination of most of their own well-paid jobs eventually as AI improves.