Silicon Valley is right–our jobs are already disappearing
qz.com
qz.com
When it comes down to it, our fellowship is designed for recent grads (meaning graduating seniors, those a year or two into their careers, or grad students with a year or two of advanced schooling). Our training, mentorship, and job opportunities are targeted to those fresh out of college, so if you have three or more years of professional experience or advanced schooling, this might not be the best fit."
The latest trend in the news seems to indicate AI (not cheap immigrant labor) is taking over jobs. The solution is for young graduates to join these "fellowships", bootcamps, and other attempts to pool cheap young labor. Old people need not apply.
http://conexus.cberdata.org/files/MfgReality.pdf
"We begin by examining productivity. The most common measure of productivity is the average product of labor, which is simply the value of all goods manufactured in the U.S. divided by the number of workers." (p3)
In other words, if you offshore half of your workforce for half the price (purchasing them as a service like Apple does) while maintaining sales and a notional "made in the USA" stamp, this study concludes that your productivity has doubled.
Later on in the study they give a lot of reasons for why they think "the value of goods manufactured" divided by "number of workers" has gone up and conclude without much analysis that it was "spawned by growth in the industrial use of information technology" (p4).
They appear to calculate job losses attributable to trade by deducting the value of export goods from the value of imported goods.
At the end of the study they lobby for the reduction of Corporation tax.
TL;DR
Smart people in the world such as Stephen Hawking, Sam Hinkie and Sam Altman, are saying jobs will be obliterated due to automation. Even the White House has published reports that have said 83% of jobs with wages less than $20/hour will be automated or replaced, between 9 and 47% of jobs are in danger of becoming obsolete, between 2.2 and 3.1 million car/bus/truck-driving jobs will be eliminated due to self-driving vehicles. Graph: https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/jobs.jpeg?quality...
Automation has already eliminated about 4 million manufacturing jobs in the U.S. since 2000. Most people left the workforce and did not return. During that same period, the U.S. labor force plummeted by about 10 million. Labor participation rate in the U.S. is at 62.7%, a rate right below El Salvador and right above Ukraine (Source: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/labor-force-pa...). Chart: https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2017/01/driving-jobs.png?...
"Each 1% decline equates to about 2.5 million Americans dropping out. Number of working-age Americans who aren't in the workforce surged to a record 95 million up almost 500,000 in the last month alone, many being factory workers."
High unemployment rates correlate to higher rates of substance abuse, domestic violence, child abuse, depression, and many other social ailments (Cited Sources: https://www.spssi.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.viewpage&pag..., http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/23/health/heroin-opioid-drug-over...).
Venture for America's mission is to help create 100,000 U.S. jobs by 2025 by helping growth companies access talent and training the next generation of entrepreneurs. They claim their clients have built multi-million dollar businesses that have hired dozens or hundreds of people, even low-skilled manufacturing workers. Having trained over 500 aspiring entrepreneurs to work in 18 cities around the U.S., they are now recruiting executives from Silicon Valley companies who want to help. Most start-ups require the best talent, usually requiring a college degree. This excludes 68% of the population. And they are constantly trying to weed out inefficient people.
TL;DR: Automation is happening right now and causing job losses. Venture for America is trying to somehow stop it but does not explain the details in the article.
----
Personal thoughts:
This article seemed like a self-promotional ad for the author's company, "Venture for America" (which I will refer to as VFA). The article uses quotes from famous tech giants and scientists about automation and job loss to paint "Venture for America" as a charitable endeavor, but not explaining much about what it has done. It bothered me that he would use Sam Altman's charitable act of giving $20,000 of basic income to people living in Oakland to try to shine light on himself. All in all, it sounded very scammy and self-serving, not really saying much that wasn't already known to people who have been paying any attention to the tech sector.
It wouldn't have sounded so underhanded if the article did not cite examples of American factory workers being down, out-of-luck and jobless. If VFA cared so much about America's displaced citizens, they would be trying to help those citizens directly, not trying to poach away top executives from other big tech companies. I agree with jdhopeunique when he points out they are only looking for young, cheap graduates. Everyone wants the young bright graduates, so why should they join VFA when there are many other companies who are looking for these kinds of candidates.
VFA looks like a legitamate company that might have done some good (I don't know whether their net impact has been good or bad), but based on the article alone and without doing any further research, VFA appears to be charading altruism. This would make me reluctant to trust this organization.
I was kind of disappointed because I was looking for more substance given the headline.