“A study at Ball State University’s Center for Business and Economic Research last year found that trade accounted for just 13 percent of America’s lost factory jobs. The vast majority of the lost jobs — 88 percent — were taken by robots and other homegrown factors that reduce factories’ need for human labor.” – AP Canada’s labour force is around 19.6 million people, of which 18.2 million people are employed. Together, they worked something like 2.4 billion hours that month. In December 2016, something like 1.7 million Canadians worked about 240 million hours in manufacturing. Roughly. Because of seasonal adjustments and different data at different times. And error. In terms of our working lives in Canada, collectively, manufacturing is about 10% of[…]
Month: January 2017
A great mind in public policy told me, just this last September, that people are really bad at judging the rate of technological change and when it’ll affect them. It’s like standing on a railway. You can see the train out there. Some people assume that the train is going to hit them very soon. They get off the tracks. Then, when the train is getting very close, others misjudge the speed and assume that it’s still a far way. And then they get hit. It’s a great analogy because it combines prediction with decision. The rate of technological change is actually quite difficult to predict. If it was easy there’d be a lot more successful startups. One Heuristic Start[…]