Are the jobs running out?

It won't be today. But without any doubt, technology leads us to a no-work future.

The purpose of technology is to make life easier for human beings and therefore, their job. Over the course of time, technology has destroyed jobs and has created new ones, although to a lesser extent.

Work is the only available means for the majority of the population to subsist in an independent way. Even as a means, work has become a scarce resource whose purpose is to get another scarce resource as money. Reducing the supply of jobs on the market naturally leads to a fall in wages and, consequently, to an impoverishment of workers. The shortage of jobs will increase as the need for human intervention in productive processes continues to decline.

As if this were not enough, the population does not decrease but it increases. From an optimistic approach, we will not consider the possibility of a significant decrease in population: wars, pandemics, big natural catastrophes, etc.

Throughout the last decades we are witnessing an impoverishment of the middle class. The difference between the rich and the poor increases year after year -the gap between work and capital, too- recalling more and more situations that occurred in past centuries. But the middle class is essential for Democracy. Democratic systems are supported by middle classes. Without middle classes, the Democratic system makes no sense.

On the other hand, the stimulus that is intended to give to entrepreneurship seems to want to recreate figures socio economically similar to artisans and petty bourgeois of the European Middle Ages. It is as if one wants to admit that large-scale employment is dying. Thus, the cycle initiated in the first industrial revolution -factories with a large number of workers- would be terminated and there will be a return to the previous idea of self-employment. Perhaps we may witness the birth of a new middle class constituted (essentially, or at least in a greater proportion that until now) by entrepreneurs and freelancers.

In fact, it is a suggestion that lately you hear a lot: First, learn by working for others and when you have learned, work for yourself. The idea is not new, but it was not so popular some decades ago.

But it seems to be the same as what was happening with the apprentice and the artisan in the European Middle Ages. A point will be reached when the artisan will not be able to pay what the apprentice is worth and then, the apprentice will have to become an artisan himself.

At first, machines were designed to replace humans in the heaviest jobs. Then, in the most repetitive activities. We know that, along the time, everything that could be automated was automated and, today is the same. Until machines are able to evolve by themselves, man will have to intervene in the productive process. There will come a time when this will not be necessary.

However, long before this happens, we should see an overall reduction in the annual number of working hours.

In broad terms, we are faced with two possible situations:

1. Part of the population works and another part does not.

2. All -or the vast majority- of the population works and there is a reduction of working hours. (This is nothing to do with a social -or technological- dividend. Both things are not mutually exclusive).

So, given that the first option causes social inequality by itself and that the second option seems to offer a seamless transition -at least a known transition-, the latter seems more plausible.

Due to historical issues dating back to the XIX century, in much of the western countries, a work-week consists of, approximately, eight hours a day and five work-days a week.

“During the Industrial Revolution the production in large factories transformed the traditional labor life, both of rural and guild, imposing long days and conditions of work close to slavery.

The regulation, established since 1496 in Great Britain, according to which the working day lasted at most 15 hours: from 5 in the morning until 8 at night, was not applied. Working conditions without regulation or control deteriorated the health, well-being and morale of workers. Then, the use of child labor was common.”

Reduction to eight hours a day was made at different times depending on the country. Subsequently, the work week went from six to five days.

Anyway, eight hours a day is not a magic number to be worshipped, not even a transcendent number like e or π. It is a variable that had a value in the past, today has another, and that will take a different one in the future. It is a variable that tends to zero with the time.

Indeed, in 1930, John Maynard Keynes introduced the term “technological unemployment” and forecasted a 15 hours work-week in one century (Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren). In the 1950s, the concept of a four-day work week to make workers more happy and more productive, was introduced by American labor union leader Walter Reuther. A reduction in working hours was proposed in 2010 by the "New Economics Foundation" , recommending a week of 21working hours to alleviate a number of problems, including unemployment, low welfare, entrenched inequalities, overwork and lack of free time. In 2014, Google's co-founder, Larry Page, suggested a four-day work-week, “so as technology continues to displace jobs, more people can find employment”. Polls show that 70 per cent of millionaires think the four-day work-week is a “valid idea”. Recently, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim actually called for a three-day work-week.

Keeping salaries will be a crucial point in reducing working hours. 

According to the International Labour Organization “Recommendation on the reduction of hours of work“, working hours should be progressively reduced without any reduction in the wages of the workers as at the time hours of work are reduced. It would not be the first time. This was already done in Western Europe in XXth Century at least in two occasions, the work-week reduction from six to five days and also in the case of the annual leave implantation. In the US, in 1914, the Ford Motor Company reduced the work-day to eight hours doubling the salary. Afterwards, in 1926, the work-week went from six to five days. Ford did not reduce the wages for that.

Along the Industrial Era, technology have been causing a reduction in human working hours, in a more or less continuous way. If the next significant reduction is not soon, it will not take a long time, either.

The fact that reducing the number of working hours could have other beneficial consequences on the sustainability of the planet, consumption of resources, workers’ health and productivity, etc. has not been considered object of this article. Only it has been taken the question that technology, unavoidably, sooner or later, for good or for evil, will end with the need for human beings to have to work for a living. Because that is its reason to exist.

When winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills.

- Chinese proverb

In the writing of this article, Otis Redding ((Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay, The Dock Of The Bay) has collaborated in an involuntary but decisive way.

--------------------

1. Picture: Henning Larsen Nordea by Sandro Katalina | Unsplah.

2. I want to thank Karen Johnson for her critical opinions as well as for her revision of this text.