SURFACE MINING
How ‘Automation’ Made America Work Harder COMPUTERS – used for smart jobs over hard jobs cutting
down on office toil – achieved the other way around! A paradigm shift! The McKinsey & Company consultancy forecasted in 2018, in a full-color, 141-page study, that automation is ushering in a revolution.
T
he frequency with which executives in business, and those who run technology giants and write about these businesses, have declared the arrival of a new epoch in history. Robots and artificial intelligence are anticipated to create many, if not most, of today's
workforce out of work. Or, according to these experts, our society is teetering on the edge of chaos, only to be reconstituted again. When they saw the most recent report from the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), they must have been shocked to see that this prediction has been debunked.
42 | SKILLINGS MINING REVIEW October 2021
As was noted, between 2005 and 2018, the United States experienced a stunning decline in worker productivity; average growth 60% lower than the overall average from 1998 to 2004. Interesting to note is, machines must have driven increased worker productivity, not lead to a stagnant workforce! In contrast to management consultants and researchers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is usually reserved in its judgments. But this time, the researchers found an inevitable economic consequence of the last 20 years….an enormous setback to the bright idea that we've now stepped into an era of automation and smart work calling for better technological growth and progress. The absurdity of underemployment plus unemployment, co-existing
