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As if we didn’t already have enough to worry about, with this unplanned war against a deadly virus …
All economic downturns increase automation. This one will be worse.
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While social distancing measures may be temporary, this economic downturn’s effect on the labor market will have long-lasting effects. In a joint post with his colleagues, Mark Muro, a senior fellow and policy director at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, recently wrote, “any coronavirus-related recession is likely to bring about a spike in labor-replacing automation.”
Economic downturns, he argues, bring about increased levels of automation, which is already an existential threat to many jobs. And a coronavirus recession, due to its breadth and scale, could cause even more automation.
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Rani Molla
So what exactly has the research shown?
Mark Muro
Nir Jaimovich and Henry Siu found that, in three recessions over the last 30 years, 88 percent of job loss took place in routine highly automatable occupations. And that was essentially all of the jobs lost in the crises. So, these crises have historically inordinately been visited on workers whose work actually was automatable.
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Maybe the next Pandemic Relief Bill ought to do something to “de-incentive” Corporate Employers who would take advantage of this tragic emergency — to gouge the American workers out of their livelihoods, after this epic fight is over?
The survivors and veterans of such a war — against health and humanity — deserve no less.
… From a government, that actually cared about its people.
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We deserve some gosh-dang security, with a right to Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
Those are kind of hard to pursue, when you inevitably get booted to streets.
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