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So in the USA manufacturing jobs are going bye-bye, as are many IT jobs, as a consequence of economic and technological change, along with the shrinking disparity in education levels between the USA and mainly BRIC countries. Most of the newly unemployed will find replacement jobs, or be trained to work in off-shoot industries or newly arised industries. But again not all of them will find re-employment before the next drop off, unless the politicians are really doing their jobs.
One factory for industrial robots is enough to supply a vast number of regular factories. The whole chain is done in this area, from software development to robot design to robot construction and naturally, it takes less manhours than it saves through increased productivity, or else it wouldn't be done in the first place.
Let's take a look at Volkswagen. Last I heard, they need an increase of 7% in sales just to keep up with rising productivity. 7% more sales or 7% less workers or 7% less wages ... every year. To see the consequences of this, one only needs to take a look at Bremerhaven or any train station along the railroad line from the factories in Wolfsburg, Braunschweig and Hannover (not to mention the ones in southern Germany) to the northern harbours, where the vehicles are brought to be shipped out. Enough bloody cars to fill the English Channel, everywhere you look. That's not sustainable, not in the least. And yet they still want to keep a dying automobile manufacturer (Opel) alive ...
Just a few days, two key railroad switches at Wunstorf were shut down for maintenance, now there are countless car trains stuck at the classification yards, enough to mobilize the whole bloody state. And they are not even back to pre-crisis production levels.
What I'm saying is this: they produce more cars than ever, more than any current market can take, and even though it takes vastly more work to build a modern car than it did 50 years ago, they still need considerably less manhours per car. That includes all the suppliers as well. And they should be damn proud of it, because that's what previous generations worked for. However, it is basically kept alive artificially and has to collapse eventually. That'll be fun. Opel will be the first, 2011 at the latest.
Only completely new areas have the ability to create enough jobs to remotely compensate for the loss caused by increased productivity and saturated markets. Telecommunications was the last one, renewable energy will most likely be the next one.
That said, there will always be endless work that needs to be done, just not jobs that create an income. For instance, the national railroad could use at least the 100k people back they let go over the last 2 decades. Though to get everything done according to regulations, 200k should be a closer bet. But since it's more profitable to cut maintenance personal by another 10%, the status of the infrastructure can only be described as desolate in large parts of the country.
Edit: damn, that's 3/4 just rambling ... sorry.
Low-skill jobs are disappearing, but the jobs that are being created require higher education. Someone displaced by automation won't necessarily have a new job available to them at their skill/education level. Sure, they can learn, but that can take years. I'm fairly confident that we will see employment problems with this section of society.
Currently we do need people to repair robots, but what happens when we develop robots that can repair other robots? We will need people to design them, but not to build or maintain them. The design process has also become much easier through tech, requiring far fewer people than even ten years ago. Software design teams are decreasing in size and increasing in productivity.
Will this lead to widespread poverty? I doubt it, but it depends on how we handle it. I expect to see a lot of deflationary pressures as more and more sectors of the economy move to information technology. This is already happening in many areas, such as the cost for a given amount of processing power, information storage, dna sequencing, etc. This will ultimately affect basic essentials like food and medical care, so even the unemployed will eventually be above the poverty line (depending on the definition at the time).
Assuming we don't destroy ourselves in the process, our future is quite bright. The problem is the adjustment process. Our world is changing at a pace never seen before by the human race... we'll see how it goes.
Technology won't completely replace manual labor, but it will slowly reduce the number of people needed for any given task. It isn't some cataclysmic event, but I think that people with limited education will find it increasingly difficult to find jobs over the next few decades.
^ I don't think anyone is seriously questioning whether humans will be required for jobs... it's more of a question of how many will be needed. With people living longer and healthier lives, many of whom are willing to stay in the workforce, the question is whether or not job creation will outpace the growth of the available workforce. I have my doubts, but I can't exactly see the future.
Technology won't completely replace manual labor, but it will slowly reduce the number of people needed for any given task. It isn't some cataclysmic event, but I think that people with limited education will find it increasingly difficult to find jobs over the next few decades.
But isn't the core of the automation argument about processes replacing our jobs? Where else did these jobs go? In many cases, software and hardware has caused a job-loss, but my observation is that many more jobs will be created to maintain automation than jobs that are taken away.
Also, I disagree that people with less education will be out of jobs. I work in a technical field that hires people with little to no education. Obviously if you want a job as a programmer, you'll need to be outside this demographic -- but take this into consideration: over half of our company is related to customer support or quality assurance, which does not require higher education. They are full time positions and there is no end in site, only growth. We also have many positions which require you to simply have the proper skillset, not a degree.
As more and more technology is introduced into the general population, people gain the necessary skills to perform these new jobs. From my vantage point (which is very much a global perspective of new trends not seen until halfway through the first decade of the twenty-first century) this appears to be the way our world is turning. The company I work for, in fact, has spawned leeches in many other countries, namely China, where jobs like the ones I assure you require no education employ entire factories of workers.
EDIT: Twenty-first century, not twentieth. Old habits die hard.
There will come a time in the future when technology is able to accomplish any task that people do not want to do themselves. They will be safe and highly intelligent, with the ability to adapt to their environment and the tasks at hand. People will still be able to contribute to knowledge and understanding, but they won't be required for the mundane day-to-day operations of the world. I have a hard time seeing capitalism being functional (or needed) in such an environment.
Of course we don't suddenly jump from present-day into complete automation. The part I'm interested in is the transitional period, especially in the context of economics. I do agree that tech is currently creating a lot of jobs, but that will not always be the case... eventually the trend will reverse, and I don't think our current economic models can handle that. We will have to adapt.
I think the biggest question is "how fast will this happen". Some predict 200 or more years, but an increasing number believe it will happen in less than 100. Taking into account the current and near-term advances in biotech, we might just live to see it. If it really does take 200+ years then we will have plenty of time to react to changes in a positive way, but if it happens in less than 100 then we may be in for a bumpy ride at times. I don't think it will destroy the world, but I do think we'll see more frequent ups and downs in the world economy, including rises in unemployment (especially in the long term).
Maybe someone could start an accredited university that only had exams, no classes, but unofficially expected students to download pirated MIT or Harvard lectures by P2P. just a half-baked idea, but inflated tuition fees are definitely an obstacle for this demographic.
Oh well, at least all the people who lose their jobs at the factory can become schoolteachers... "If you can't do, teach. And if you can't teach, teach Gym."
But that would necessitate the true application of comparative advantage and opening of free trade.
Not going to happen with sectors like agriculture and so on seeking ever increasing protectionist measures through congress.
In one or two more centuries, if nanotechnology fulfills its prophecies, the average joe will be able to manufacture practically anything--fuel, food, shelter and weapons--by himself with his "nano-oven". There will probably also be humanoid robots that can do all the manual labor (shitwork) even without self-aware, independent AI. What use will there be for governments then? Most of the federal government right now is IMO useless, and thus constantly trying to invent new, meddling ways (and manufactured crises) in order to stay relevant.
Eventually people will prefer to live in a viable Matrix and willingly trade their meatsack bodies for worlds of their design.