How the automation economy can turn human workers into robots – Axios

More than outright destroying jobs, automation is changing employment in ways that will weigh on workers.

The big picture: Right now, we should be less worried about robots taking human jobs than people in low-skilled positions being forced to work like robots.

What's happening: In a report released late last week about the post-COVID-19 labor force, McKinsey predicted 45 million U.S. workers would be displaced by automation by the end of the decade, up from 37 million projected before the pandemic.

Yes, but: McKinsey notes that despite the displacements, the total number of jobs is projected to increase.

The catch: McKinsey finds that while the total number of jobs will increase, nearly all net job growth over the next decade is projected to be in high-wage occupations" which is not good news for workers with low job skills.

Zoom in: To better understand the effect of automation on employees in low-skilled jobs, Brynjolfsson and Matt Beane of the University of California-Santa Barbara (UCSB) have been carrying out detailed studies of one field that has experienced tremendous employment growth recently: e-commerce warehouses.

Details: Some of their early findings underscore why simply introducing robots especially in jobs that involve a lot of unpredictable, fine manual work doesn't instantly lead to wholesale job destruction.

Between the lines: But what Beane and Brynjolfsson have discovered during detailed interviews with e-commerce employees and visits to warehouses is that humans themselves are already working in more automated ways.

What to watch: How quickly industrial robots are developed that can handle the uncertainty and fine manual work of e-commerce warehouses as well as human laborers.

The bottom line: Without better government support, U.S. employees with low job skills increasingly face a future of working like a robot if at all.

Go deeper: The robo-job apocalypse is being delayed

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How the automation economy can turn human workers into robots - Axios