Introduction / Context:
Automation refers to the use of machines, software, and control systems to perform tasks with reduced human intervention. The question tests understanding of how automation affects total employment over time by balancing displacement in some roles with new job creation and productivity-driven expansion.
Given Data / Assumptions:
- Short run effects can displace specific categories of workers.
- Productivity increases reduce costs per unit and often expand output.
- New technologies create complementary roles in design, maintenance, programming, analytics, safety, and supervision.
- Labor markets adapt through retraining and occupational shifts over time.
Concept / Approach:
Analyze demand-side expansion due to lower prices and higher quality, supply-side substitution between capital and labor, and induced innovation that creates fresh occupations. Long run general equilibrium often differs from short run partial equilibrium.
Step-by-Step Solution:
1) Identify immediate effect: some routine or hazardous tasks are automated, displacing workers locally.2) Recognize productivity effect: unit costs fall, output demand typically rises, and firms scale operations.3) Account for complementary jobs: roles in robotics maintenance, software development, data analysis, quality control, user support, and integration emerge.4) Consider multiplier effects: higher profitability and lower prices stimulate related sectors including logistics, marketing, and services.5) Aggregate over the economy: while composition of jobs changes, total employment tends to grow with expanding industries and new services.
Verification / Alternative check:
Historical waves such as mechanized weaving, assembly lines, computerization, and ecommerce initially displaced tasks but increased total employment in many economies through new industries and broader consumption baskets.
Why Other Options Are Wrong:
- a net loss of jobs: captures short run dislocations but ignores offsetting creation and scale effects.
- no change in jobs: unrealistic because technology shifts structure and quantity of employment.
- All of the above: mutually exclusive statements cannot all be true.
- None of the above: incorrect since long run evidence supports net increases in many contexts.
Common Pitfalls:
Confusing local layoffs with macro outcomes, ignoring complementary roles, assuming fixed demand, and neglecting time horizons for retraining and policy support.
Final Answer:
a net increase in jobs.
Discussion & Comments