Machine beats man - prospects of paid work

The primary issue for technological unemployment is the expected labour market impact of technological change, which in the modern time, includes broad and vague concepts such as automation, robotization, increasing computing power, Big Data, the penetration of the Internet, the Internet-of-Things, online platforms and artificial. Irrespective of the term used, one school of thought claims that new technology will displace human labour and this time not just blue-collared tasks, but also white-collared tasks which will consequently result in labour market disruptions, while another school emphasizes job polarization both in terms of wages and employment vulnerability between routine middle-skilled workers, and low-skilled and high-skilled non-routine workers. Both developments would result in wide-spread poverty and inequality. However, doomsday predictions of technological joblessness do not get support from economic theories or past experiences. However, technological change will most likely increase job displacements with low-educated workers taking the hardest hits. The changes call for policies which promote human capital investment especially among long-term unemployed and the young people not in education, employment and training.