The Jobs of The Future

One of the big things that people talk about and agonize over is the idea of "the jobs of the future." The presumption is that many of the things that today are made by Americans will be made by robots or Chinese people tomorrow. Hence fewer people will have jobs making those things and will instead have some other kind of jobs. "The jobs of the future."

This is all correct so far as it goes. But the analysis then tends to assume that future jobs are going to be futuristic jobs, which I think is pretty misleading. Of course in the future some people will have futuristic jobs. But a lot of what's going to happen is that we'll just have more employment in already-extant banal fields that's just aren't amenable to being done by Chinese people or robots. After all "the future" in this sense is a richer world. Right now, some people work as personal trainers. If people were richer, more people would hire personal trainers, and your personal trainer can't live in Shenzhen so this is one of "the jobs of the future." We'll have more cops and security guards. As people get richer, they eat at fancier places where service is more labor-intensive so we'll have more sommeliers and waiters. Not only will there be more old people in the future, but the richer old people of tomorrow will be better cared-for and have more caretakers of various kinds per capita. People will go on more frequent and more ambitious vacations with all the extra commerce that implies.

I suppose standing in front of the US Congress and saying "imagine the extra stuff your family would do if it were 15 percent richer; now imagine some more people providing those services—that's how we'll win the future." But sometimes the truth is a little boring.