http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21594298-effect-todays-technology-tomorrows-jobs-will-be-immenseand-no-country-ready
 
Articles like this one completely freak me out. I feel like I'm living in a middle aged panic attack.

Luckily there will always be a demand for people skilled at writing alarmist predictive analyses of future events!
 
 
At least that's what I predict based on my analysis of history repeating itself.

I continue to like you despite myself, Drewfx1.
:-)

'Tis exactly why I'm sitting on my butt, unemployed, doing video training right now...
 
I can't get a decent job due to lack of recent experience and I can't get an entry level position because "they" think I'd just get current and leave.  Weeeeeee....

This puzzles and worries me a lot.
I often say that soon the only "normal" jobs for ordinary folks left in Europe is cutting each others hair and changing each others diapers in senior homes. Everything else can be made cheaper by robots here or by people somewhere in Asia.
 
Globalisation is changing everything so rapidly and violently. Very low paid service branch jobs and signifigantly more demanding specialist jobs leave a huge gap between them. USA is in a little better situation, because there you have all the energy sources, oil, gas and minerals within your own borders.

@CraigB... I'm really sorry you're not working.
 
@Kalle The rate of change is particularly frightening. When things happen slowly enough, people can move around and find new opportunities. This isn't the first time historically that technology changes have dramatically displaced workers, but I can't think of a time in history where such a large percentage were displaced so quickly.

According to them.
 
According to this:
http://www.amazon.com/What-Color-Your-Parachute-Career-Changers/dp/1580085415
 
My butt is burning on the way down, there is no parachute, because there is a hole in it.
 
I always figured I could make more money being a comedian than anything else. I just have not proved it yet.
 
 

gswitz
@CraigB... I'm really sorry you're not working.
 
@Kalle The rate of change is particularly frightening. When things happen slowly enough, people can move around and find new opportunities. This isn't the first time historically that technology changes have dramatically displaced workers, but I can't think of a time in history where such a large percentage were displaced so quickly.

Thanks for the support.  The closest I've come is a 20 minute talk on the phone - no in-person interview and they've never called my references (most don't even reply to applications or requests and that includes head hunting firms).  I'm still trying though!

Of course The Economist suggests that the solution to the problem of cybernetic/robotic labor taking all the jobs is for governments to invest in education for their population. While I am sure many of us who are tired of hearing the sad tales of displaced Nigerian PhD's driving American taxicabs, would prefer to hear it in unaccented English from unemployable American PhD cab drivers, I am not sure that education (or even targeted job training which is largely replacing education in American universities) will go very far toward making every person employable. The effect of higher levels of talent and education required for jobs in the new economy, has been to raise the entry level for an average worker. When IQ 100 and 2 years of junior college becomes the equivalent of IQ 85 and the ability to find the right end of a shovel, half the population will need to look for employment in sheltered workshops.
 
Or we can re-examine the whole concept of funding the future on the quaint concept of working for a living.

So I shouldn't talk about the tale of a displaced PhD(c) with an IQ of 160+ who can't even get a cab driving job (because he doesn't speak Nigerian), ya?