Impact Of Automation On Employment

Automation raises several important social issues such as employment. Some say that automation leads to higher employment. When automation was first introduced, it caused fear on workers. It was thought that the replacement of human workers by computerized systems would lead to severe unemployment. In fact, the opposite has often been true, e.g., the freeing the labor force and allowing more people to enter higher skilled jobs, which are typically paying very high.

Some argue in the reverse. They argue that automation has only just begun and the conditions doe not highly impact in the long run. Many manufacturing jobs are being left in the United States during the early 1990s, but at a time there is a massive increase in IT jobs (which are only now being outsourced), at the same time, offset this.

It appears that automation devalues labor through its replacement with low cost machines; however, the overall effect of this on the workers as a whole remains unclear. Today automation in many industries is very advanced and continues to advance increasingly more rapidly throughout the world. It is even increasing more skilled jobs and now the labour force with less income are allowed to enter into a high skilled jobs.