Technology-driven widespread unemployment ("the robots will take all the jobs") is, like wizards who fly spaceships, a fun premise for science fiction but difficult to find examples for in economic history.
(The best example I know is for horses.)
(The best example I know is for horses.)
I understand people who are extremely concerned by it, but I think you need a theory for it which successfully predicts bank teller employment trends over the last 50 years prior to justifying the number of column inches it gets.
"Haha Patrick you're not going to tell me bank teller employment is up since we made a machine literally called Automated Teller Machine are you."
Bessen, 2015:
Bessen, 2015:
"Wait why did that happen?"
Short version: the ATM makes each bank branch need less tellers to operate at a desired level of service, but the growth of the economy (and the tech-driven decline in cost of bank branch OpEx) caused branch count to outgrow decline in tellers/branch.
Short version: the ATM makes each bank branch need less tellers to operate at a desired level of service, but the growth of the economy (and the tech-driven decline in cost of bank branch OpEx) caused branch count to outgrow decline in tellers/branch.
