As if American workers don’t have enough to worry about right now, the COVID-19 pandemic is resurfacing concerns about technology’s impact on the future of work. Put simply, any coronavirus-related recession is likely to bring about a spike in labor-replacing automation.
What’s the connection between recessions and automation? On its face, the transition to automation may appear to be a steady, long-term trend. At the same time, it might seem intuitive that any rise unemployment in the coming months will make human labor relatively cheaper, thus slowing companies’ move to technology. Unfortunately for the workers poised to be affected by automation, this is not the case.
Robots’ infiltration of the workforce doesn’t occur at a steady, gradual pace. Instead, automation happens in bursts, concentrated especially in bad times such as in the wake of economic shocks, when humans become relatively more expensive as firms’ revenues rapidly decline. At these moments, employers shed less-skilled workers and replace them with technology and higher-skilled workers, which increases labor productivity as a recession tapers off.
Read Full Article @ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/03/24/the-robots-are-ready-as-the-covid-19-recession-spreads/
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